Thy Soul of Sin
by scelerus animus
Summary: [Complete] She remembers not her past or her name. Only painful flashes of gold eyes she cannot trust any longer and sinful scarlet eyes she has never trusted. Yet her savior's eyes...the sinful scarlet red of blood, so deceiving, so addictive. [NarKag]
1. Dawn of Wicked Scarlet

Author Notes: Heh, umm... I was taking a short break from my other fic 'cause of a little writer's block I seem be experiencing when all of a sudden a vicious plot bunny snuck up from behind me while I was eating cheetos and watching 'Inuyasha' and attacked me! So trapped within its rather pointy teeth it deemed me to write this... so I could do nothing but obey it! Hehe.

Yeah, I don't know if this plot has been used before but it probably has, though it's still fun anyways, hehe... so... err... yep...

**disclaimer:**Nope, anything associated with 'Inuyasha' belongs to Rumiko Takahashi. Bless her wonderful imagination.

**rating: R** Right now, it's probably more of a PG-13 but later there will be more blood, gore, violence etc... and probably for sexual situations in later chapters so... yeah. Don't like, don't read. Simple, really.

**pairing:** Naraku/Kagome

Umm... that's it for now... so...

Without further ado...

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**Thy Soul of Sin  
**By: DarkRoseBlood

_Chapter One  
__Dawn of Wicked Scarlet_

Where was she?

_Who was she?_

_How..._

The morning's dawn cast vivid rays of sparkling sunlight through the painted windows and rustling cloth of the open doorway onto the young woman or actually girl—no older than sixteen—who lay on a large futon mat covered with several blankets in the center of an elegant room.

She blinked, trying to readjust her blurry eyes to the shining light as she slowly sat up on her elbows. Once her eyes had adjusted to the morning's rays she glanced around at the room. She was surprised to find herself laying in the rather luxurious yet comfortable looking room which surrounded her.

Next to her bed, two candles burned dimly against the sun's light, and in between them a small ceramic crafted pot burned with intoxicating incesnse. A faint stream of smoke issued from the decorated bowl leaving the room smelling of apples and lilacs.

Perhaps a strange combination, but it was pleasing to the young girl as the scent wafted around her in hazy swirls.

As she sat fully up to get a better look at the room, a sharp pain pierced right through her stomach like a pointed dagger. It was then she noticed that she wore a pale blue yukata decorated with small darker blue Sakura blossoms and beneath it, her abdomen was wrapped tightly with white cloth just above her belly button.

Her shoulder and lower leg were also wrapped tightly; faint spots of red peeked through the restraining strips of white cloth. Other scratches and scars marred the young girl's chest, arms, and legs.

_'What in the world happened to me?'_ she wondered as she surveyed her multiple injuries.

"Oh, dear, you're finally awake," said a voice, disrupting the young girl's musing.

The young girl looked up to see a pretty woman of perhaps thirty or so standing in the doorway, smiling pleasantly. She wore a mauve-colored kimono with her pitch-black hair tied up in a loose bun and carried various herbs in a woven basket.

Kneeling down beside her, the woman said, "Oh, good your fever has finally broken! It's been a week already since milord first brought you here bleeding and injured while running such a high fever, child! At first I was afraid ye were not going to make it. But you're a strong one, child." The woman smiled kindly.

The young girl just stared at her, confusion and surprise written clearly on her face. She opened her mouth to say something, but the woman interrupted her.

"No ye don't. You can speak after I redress those nasty wounds, child. Okay?" the woman said.

The young girl just nodded and tried to remember how she got here while the kind woman redressed her wounds.

It was funny that she couldn't remember where she was or how she got there. Actually, she couldn't remember very much at all.

Blood. Yes, she remembered lots of blood and screaming. She remembered voices and a giant fang-like sword and well... they were just flashes really. Flashes of voices and objects, but she couldn't remember much else.

Wait... what was her name? She couldn't even remember her own name! She didn't know who she was!!!

"Oh dear Kami!" she gasped as the realization finally struck.

"What is it, child?" asked the kind woman, a worried look on her face.

"I... I don't know who I am..." she murmured, turning to look at the woman, panic apparent on her face. "I don't know who I am!"

The kind woman's face brow furrowed slightly as she stared at the young girl.

"Perhaps, child, during the battle ye hit your head, and it caused a tad bit of memory loss. Come to think of it, ye did have a rather nasty bruise on your head when I first tended to ye wounds."

"But... but..."

"Don't worry, child, I'm sure your get ye memory back in due time. For the time being, however, I will fix you some herbal tea that will help ease the pain. All right, dear?"

"Hai," the girl murmured staring off into her lap, "that would nice."

The young woman smiled at the quiet girl placing a tender hand on her shoulder. "It will be all right, my dear. Don't worry," she assured the young girl and gently stood up, walked over to the sliding shoji door, and padded out into the hall to make the tea.

The young girl smiled softly, cheered slightly by the woman's positive mood. She turned her gaze to look beyond the identical, partially translucent segments of pale blue cloth that separated the room from the small porch outside. The sunrise was absolutely picturesque, and she was pleased to see its rays shine down upon a short pathway from the veranda to a beautiful courtyard.

Her gaze returned to the rest of the furnishings in the rather large room as she resumed her inspection. All across the walls, silver and pale blue Sakura blossoms were painted in an ornate but still fresh and simple array.

An oak wood wardrobe stood in one corner and so did an oriental vanity dresser and mirror. Across from them lay a delicate glass dressing screen with the same silver and blue Sakura blossoms painted on it.

Various candles and incense holders lay scattered here and there in a decorative design, as well. The entire room was elegant yet pleasantly fresh.

The injured girl wondered who was the Lord, which owned this lovely home, after all only a Lord could own such a high-class castle, and the kind woman had said a Lord had brought her here. She wondered if the Lord of the castle knew who she was.

_'Well, he should know. Although, that kind woman didn't seem to know me... But hey, it's not everyday someone like him would bring someone into his home he didn't even know so he should know me... hopefully...' _

She groaned and fell back onto the soft futon with a frustrated sigh. _'Stupid memory loss...'_

Well, at least she seemed to have woken up in pleasant environment. She could just imagine the number of places she could have woken up. Like surrounded by dead bodies or in an evil youkai's stomach. After all, the kind woman had said the Lord had brought her here bleeding and injured.

She wasn't sure from what, but the big hole in her stomach told her it wasn't something exactly human.

_'I can remember things like demons and humans and general stuff, but I do not remember anything about myself or anybody I might have known.'_

She sighed once more, staring up at the blank ceiling.

Who was she?

"Here's your tea, child. It's nice and warm so drink up," said the voice of the kind woman as she entered the room, once again breaking the pondering girl out of her thoughts.

Slowly sitting up, she gently took the steaming cup into her hands and smiled, smelling the herbal scents wafting from it. "Mmmm, arigatou."

"Ah, ye welcome, child," the woman replied sitting down beside the girl while slowly mixing herbs.

"Err... gomen, but I never got your name," the girl smiled sheepishly.

"Oh, sorry child. That was my mistake," she exclaimed smiling at the girl, "My name is Izumi. I am the local healer for the village near the Temple."

"Temple?" the curious onna asked, taking a sip of her tea.

"Hai, the castle you have been healing in is part of a shrine that has watched over the village and the surrounding mountains for many centuries. But I'm afraid I'm the closest thing to a miko this shrine has seen in several years. The last Lord went into a horrible depression after his daughter, the current miko of the shrine, was killed by ferocious snake youkai that attacked the village about a decade ago. I knew the Lord had a son who went off into battle a few years ago, but I haven't seen him since until he returned bringing a mortally wounded ye here."

"Oh..." was the only thing the stunned onna could think of saying.

"Milord was injured rather severely himself, but he would not let me tend to his wounds. He just told me to care of ye, child."

"Oh... gomen nasai," the still shocked girl could only say as Izumi went back to mixing the herbs.

"Do not fret ye self, child," smiled Izumi, continuing her task of grounding and mixing herbs.

The girl just silently twirled the china teacup, causing the herbal tea to swirl inside its porcelain holder.

"Hmm... ginseng... lilacs... lavender..." the girl murmured while naming each different herb as she smelled their lazy scents floating from the steamy cup. She took a small sip of it, instantly feeling the warmth and the herbs' healing properties spread throughout her body.

The smiling Izumi looked up from her task, a dash of surprise evident in her warm coffee eyes.

"Ye are rather good at identifying the different herbs," she said, smiling approvingly.

"Umm, it's really nothing," the blushing girl muttered. "I can remember stuff like that, but I can't remember much else."

"Hmm... do ye recall anything else?" asked Izumi as she wiped her hands on the white cloth over her kimono she used as an apron.

"Err... well, I do remember... a pair of golden eyes and... a set of bow... and arrows... hai, and my... purifying powers...?" the ebony-haired girl said, staring into her teacup in confusion.

"If ye don't mind me saying, it sounds as if ye are a miko," Izumi said looking at the girl's bowed head.

"Hai... I remember... to some people, I was a miko..." she murmured, her brow slightly furrowed.

"Well, see child, your memory is not completely gone. And a miko, ye say ye remember to be. Perhaps that is why milord rescued you from whatever horrible situation ye were in and brought ye here to this shrine which has been without a miko for many years."

"Maybe..."

"And what about these golden eyes, ye say ye recall," said Izumi, a thoughtful look on her cheery face, "A rather unusual color for eyes unless ye be a some kind of youkai, and ye weren't talking about yourself because ye eyes are as dark blue as the midnight sky. Also a rather unusual shade but I can tell ye are not a demon."

"My eyes are blue?" inquired the girl.

"Hai, child," said Izumi.

"I don't even remember what I look like..." muttered the girl, slightly disheartened once more. She took another sip of her tea.

Sunlight filtered through the stained windows and fluttering pale blue curtains shining upon her small from like a thousand glittering jewels .

"Don't worry ye self, child. That can easily be fixed when ye are strong enough to stand up without injuring yourself further, which should be in a few days," smiled Izumi warmly. "But right now, we have to try figure out your name, child."

Taking another sip of her tea, the girl said, "Well, I think it begins with a K... err... and that's about all I can remember."

"Hmm... a K... well, let's see... there's Kazuko, Keiko, Kiku, Kimiko, Kumiko..." listed Izumi while the young girl just shook her head at each one, "...Kaori, Kira, Kaiya, Kimi, Kiyoko, Kikyo..."

At the last name, the young girl fiercely shook her head, a troubling feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. Her ebony looks swayed fiercely at the movement, faint blue highlights glistening beneath the sun's silent beams of light.

Izumi chuckled at this. "Well, that is all the names that I can think of, so what shall we call you, miko child?"

The young girl just sighed, finished the last of her tea, and placed the cup beside her bed. She stared at the several covers, all various shades of blue with silver blossoms stitched on the top one.

"Perhaps Kagome would be appropriate..." spoke a soft velvet voice from the doorway.

"Milord!" exclaimed Izumi, immediately standing up and bowing. "Ye shouldn't be out of bed so soon, milord. Even though ye wouldn't let me tend to ye wounds ye should still be resting!"

"It is all right, Izumi," he calmly said to the frantic healer who had not noticed the young girl behind her who had abruptly sat straight up when she first saw the Lord; her sapphire eyes stared up at him with a strange look.

The young onna gazed at the man who stood in the doorway with wide and slightly fearful eyes. Voices and flashes of hot blood appeared before her eyes in a portrait of fiery red.

She unconsciously scooted back away from the man—or was he even a man?—that stood in the doorway, his long raven hair flowing around him in treacherous cascades.

His eyes were a reddish-brown lidded with a bright blue. However, there was something about his eyes that held the girl in an alluring trance that she couldn't break away from as he gazed at her.

His eyes... they were the wrong color...

_Blood... so much blood... screams... terrified screams... in pain... oh, the awesome pain... how it burned..._

She gasped as images that were too hazy to discern continued to flash before her eyes... like deadly knives, they attacked her mind... those eyes...

_Blood... screams... fire... crying... people were... crying... she could not see them... but they cried... blood... demon...rivers of blood... they cried in rivers of blood..._

Violent trembles racked the girl's body... her mouth parted slightly in a silent scream... those eyes...

_The screams... they peirced her heart... they scoured her... betrayal... love... blood ran... she ran... light... blinding sparks... and flashes... of... the blood... _

Izumi was now grasping her shoulder, calling her...

_There was so much of it... drowning..._

She did not notice. All she saw were the eyes of the man or... demon... no not a full demon... but... _something_ that stood before her...

_Stabbed... crimson blood... her crimson blood... flowing... screams that burned the dark night... darkness... _

Her dull nails scratched at the wooden floor... those eyes... something about those eyes...

_The screams... pounding... death... destruction... chaos... amid it all... scarlet..._

Those burning eyes that seemed to perceive her soul in hazy red... that flawless face... that smirk... something wicked...

_Wicked... it haunted... but what was 'it'... lost... so hopelessly lost... horrors... and the blood... the blood... it screamed... at her... why..._

Izumi was still frantically trying to calm the trembling girl. However, it did nothing to break her from the spellbound of which the man's—the demon's smoldering eyes entrapped her in...

_Betrayal... betrayed... she was betrayed... dead... love and betrayal... agony... torment... she was betrayed by... betrayed... golden eyes... _

Her breath was shallow and harsh... her bottom lip quivered as the visions... continued there brutal assault upon her mind... she could not see... red... red... **red eyes**...

_Darkness... light... lost... corruption... stabbed... sliced... and the blood... it rains... which pours... the rain... she loved the rain... rainfall... bloodfall... she hated those demon eyes... betrayal... betrayed by eyes of... betrayed and deceived... shining gaze of molten gold... fire... and now... captured by... or saved... by eyes... saved by eyes of..._

Convulsions seized her and all things faded. Izumi's worried voice was just but a far away whisper. Spellbound by those eyes which were not human... yet not demon... she could not tell... red... She heard nor saw anymore as the blissful release of unconsciousness took over her soul... those eyes...

_Blood red orbs filled with wicked sin... _

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More Babbling: Heh, so... what'd you think? Plz, plz review and tell me! I love reviews! I absolutely adore them! Plz! Anything, anything at all: constructive criticism, comments, questions, mistakes, etc... Plz, it'll only take a minute or two. I really like to know how was my beginning. Plz?!

Erm... okay... updates... hmm... one... two... weeks? I dunno. I should probably update in about two weeks or so if ppl really think this is interesting enough to continue. Or I'll probably update whether ppl like it or not but hey, reviews still make the author happy. And when the author's happy, everybody's happy. Or not. Hehe. But hey...

Uhh... this story is going to one of my more laid back ones so I don't plan to rush anything. I have always written on more of a whim and my muses' bossiness so I'm just gonna take my sweet time and relax, k?

Anyways, sorry for any grammar or spelling mistakes, I suck at it and still don't have a beta so... yeah...

Plz review and I'll stop my rambling now... Hehe... I always talk too much in my a/n's... okay, okay I'm shutting up... geez... don't need to get the cane out...

Erm... yeah... err... arigatou... and bye-bye for now...

(: DarkRoseBlood


	2. As Dawn Becomes Deceiving Night

Author Notes: Sorry for the long wait, but my dadwas messing with the stupid computer and totally screwed it up. All my work that I had saved on it went _-poof!- _and was gone! I was really pissed, but I managed to save some stuff... though not all of it, which included my finished version of this chapter, so I had to go back and re-finish it all and then re-edit it and... yeah... I have a headache...

So here I am rewriting this chap... having no absolute clue as to where I am going... but that's okay, I never do... yup, a really annoying headache...

**rating: R **Right now, it's probably more of a PG-13 but later there will be more blood, gore, violence etc... and probably for sexual situations in later chapters so... yeah. Don't like, don't read. Simple, really.

**disclaimer:** Nope.

**pairing:** Naraku/Kagome Yay!

Err... I think that's it...

-blinks- Whoa... -looks around- Eleven! Eleven reviews! Whoa! I love you guys! I'm so happy! A big thanx to all my wonderful reviewers! I love you guys. -coughs- Err... arigatou!

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**Reviews:**

**Shinobi-chan:** Oh, thanx so much! And I plan to so I hope you keep reading:)

**NarakuYugureHimitsu:** Awe, thanx so much and you are so right! There are really so few NarKag fics out there, hehe. I'm glad my first chap interested ppl:P

**lady sakura:** Thanx a bunches:)

**YamiEmmy:** Really! Me:looks around: My fic! On a favorites list! Yay! Thanx and I'm glad you decided to find a NarKag fic (mine!) and liked it! I hope you continue to enjoy it! Thanx for reviewing:D

**DarkAngelBabe:** Hey, thanx:)

**Elfy Archer:** Heh, thanx a bunches! I'm happy you think the emotions are portrayed well! I have always tried to convey emotions that go deeper than normal. :D

**Sano999:** Heh, me too. Thanx! ;)

**Naraku's Dark Soul:** Oh, don't worry they will... eventually... when I get around to it... who knows when that will be... Hehe. Thanx a lot for reviewing:D

**Ookami Jinx:** Heh, sorry I couldn't update sooner, but hey, I finally did! Thanx a bunches for reviewing:)

**DarkinsidetheLight:** Awe, thanx so much! Hehe... 'beautiful'... heh, never heard that before, hmm... sounds good... I hope my fic stays that way and doesn't turn into one of the bad ones, ne? Thanx:P

**Elementsofmine:** Hee! I read your fic 'Stained Red' and thought it was so awesome! I'm so happy that you like mine! Thanx a bunches! NarKag does rule!

Wow! So many reviews! Yipee! Thank you so much to all the ppl who reviewed! Arigatou! Arigatou! Arigatou!

Heh... okay... err... yeah... without further ado...

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**Thy Soul of Sin  
**By: DarkRoseBlood

_Chapter Two  
__As Dawn Becomes Deceiving Night_

When the first glittering sparks of awareness filtered back into the young girl's mind, it was well into the premature twilight. The brilliant sun, which had shined through the open doors and painted windows upon her form in the early morning, was currently sinking slowly behind the mountains in the east on the other side of the Shrine. Its brilliant gaze now cast a spectacle of hazy pinks, reds, and yellows across the pleasantly silent land.

Her dark sapphire eyes flickered open as she softly moaned, steadily sitting up. However, this was perhaps not the best course of action, for when she fully sat up her eyes met the shadowed ones of brownish-red. And they certainly did not belong to Izumi for Izumi was no where in sight.

With a sharp gasp, she held the pale blue blankets close to her chest and stared at the Lord who sat beside her bed. She continued to stare at him unable to break away from his intense gaze yet... some part of her did not wish to.

"Why is it that you fear me, miko?" the raven-haired Lord spoke, his voice like a velvet ocean upon her ears. A wicked, wicked ocean.

"I–I'm a miko?" she asked, gazing at the Lord with wide eyes. Why did she get such a wicked feeling from him... yet a pleasant one at the same time? How could that be?

"Hai, you are," he softly said, his eyes somewhat amused. "You do not remember?"

"Well, it's not my fault," she said indignantly. How dare he be amused at her memory loss!

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared huffily at him.

He softly laughed, which caught the young girl by surprise. "Now, that is the stubborn miko I remember."

"You kn–know me?" she asked, looking at him questioningly.

"Hai," he said, eyes still filled with amusement, "I know much about you."

She looked down at her lap slightly ashamed. After all, Izumi had said he had saved her from some awful situation she had been in and brought her here. But still... there was something about him, which filled her with apprehension.

"You said my name was K–Kagome," she murmured, slowly gazing up at him, "but how do you know me?"

He just silently gazed at her, amusement and some other indecipherable emotions swirling in his deep brown eyes tinged with a dark red hue.

"And... and why do I get this feeling of something..." she said, narrowing her eyes a bit, "something... wicked... from you."

She turned to face him fully and stared straight into his eyes that seemed slightly redder at the present.

"Something... inhuman... that Izumi does not realize and I do because..." she shivered slightly as she recalled her earlier flashes, "because of these flashes... when I look at you... and I can also sense it..."

Finally he spoke, the corner of his mouth curving into a slight smirk, "Always the observant one, miko. And such fire for a miko, as well."

She stared at him, trying to see through his game. Yes, she remembered that he enjoyed playing games with... people and their minds and hearts.

"What happened?" she cautiously said. "I remember a battle... and blood... lots of it... and I remember... feeling betrayed... and I remember your eyes... they were a scarlet red... and how I hated them..."

The raven-haired Lord laughed, a pleased smile on his lips. "Is that so? Tell me, Kagome, is that all you remember about me?"

She looked at him, apprehension indeed filling her. She knew he was dangerous, and he had the upper hand in this twisted little game he played. He knew who she was, and what had happened. She did not. But still... something about him... a feeling... she found pleasant. And she definitely did not like that.

Who was he? What did he know?

"Something evil..." she murmured, scrutinizing his face," something I despise... something vile and wicked... yet..."

She did not want to say the last. She really did not wish to say something... warm... something pleasant... something safe...

"Tell me, Kagome, do you fear me?" he asked, his velvet voice taunting her.

_Kagome..._ she thought,_ Is that even my true name or just another sick game of his..._

"Do I have a reason to?" she questioned back, glaring at him. She did not like his games.

He watched her with appraising gaze, a slightly foreboding smirk present on his face. His eyes silently surveyed each curve along her face, each indention and scar as the soft candlelight played across each pale feature. The sunset's last rays shined behind her through the swaying blue cloth, circling her form in a delicate glow of pink, orange, and yellow, further enriching her fiery appearance.

A sharp gasp sounded through the silent room as the Lord gracefully lunged at her like icy liquid and easily pinned her to the elegant futon.

Her eyes squeezed shut as the pain from her injuries coursed along each nerve, setting every cell on scorching fire. When the pain had subsided, she opened her to eyes to find herself staring into dark pools of blazing blood red. Her chest heaved with each sharp intake of breath as she gazed into the scarlet eyes she remembered.

"Who are you?" she murmured, staring up at the Lord's face that was only an inch or two from hers. Her arms were pinned to her sides, and silent but warm breath sprayed across her face as ruby eyes glittered down at her. Waves of midnight black hair flowed around her in rich cascades.

A smirk that would have chilled anybody else besides the miko smiled down upon her helpless form. "I am Naraku."

Visions of blood... death... destruction... screams... and betrayal... flashed before her eyes blocking the fierce gaze for but a moment, before they ceased once more.

"Naraku... Iie, I do not fear you..." she said, her breath slightly ragged. He was so close to her. A little too close for her liking. Damn him.

He studied her with that ever-present smirk upon his face. A soft laugh reached her ears. "We have yet to see if that is wise, still... I cannot have my miko fearing her master."

"I belong to no one, Naraku," she spit out, her sapphire eyes ablaze with anger.

Another laugh. "Do you know that you said the same exact thing to me not too long ago, Kagome?"

"Shut up!"

"Why?" he taunted, his voice like a silky embrace upon her ears.

She was silent, glaring into his mocking red eyes of a demon. Wait... demon... demon... but...

"Naraku..." she started, her anger having dissipated as curiosity replaced it, "you are only a half demon, are you not?"

He cocked his head, midnight hair shifting slightly as looked upon her with those damn ruby eyes of his.

"This is a quality of yours that intrigues me, Kagome. ...You change your emotions so quickly. Forgetting the anger you held just moments ago... Hai, my miko," he smirked, sadism entwining with sickly amusement and delight in scarlet orbs.

Kagome sighed, closed her eyes, and relaxed her head against on the comfortable pale azure pillow. "I do not remember who I am... but I remember flashes of you and other... things. And I–, Naraku, I was your enemy... so why did you save me when I was betrayed... by..."

Golden eyes.

Naraku studied the miko below him. Such a strange woman to have high opinions and beliefs of which she strongly clung to as if were she to let them go, everything around her would crumble and fall beneath her very feet. Of course, that was what had first caught his attention _besides_ the fact she was the priestess Kikyo's reincarnation. And to put up with that hanyou, Inuyasha, was a feat in itself.

Yet... despite her loyal and zealous grasp on her beloved beliefs her pitiful life was already collapsing upon its own paradoxical basis.

_Inuyasha..._ Naraku inwardly laughed.

Even this miko's downfall had originated from her love for that arrogant half-breed's... just like her incarnate, the priestess Kikyo's had been.

However... this miko had truly been betrayed by the inu hanyou and not because of anything Naraku had done.

A thought Naraku actually found rather amusing. And all this pain for such a foolish thing: love.

Truly foolish.

The ever-taunting irony of it all.

Naraku languidly raised a claw and dragged his sharp nails across the miko's pale cheek. Her eyes snapped open to look into the glittering blood ruby of the half demon Naraku.

"Golden eyes..." she murmured. "And your eyes are not gold..."

"Another correct observation from you, miko," Naraku drawled, wickedness glowing in scarlet sparkles.

"So why did you save me, Naraku?" she wondered aloud.

Naraku smirked and added a tad more pressure as he dragged his claws across her scarred cheek. She felt a trickle of warm blood travel down her jaw in a jagged path.

"So I might control your power, miko," Naraku drawled somewhat idly.

She examined every aspect of the half demon above her. Each curve of his smooth, flawless face and every glint of his scarlet eyes she mentally memorized, drinking up his dark features. He was indeed beautiful, but there was something dark and undeniably evil about the beauty he held.

And he had saved her... though he was supposed to be her enemy. Yet... those golden eyes... she had cared about them deeply... and they had betrayed... her...

And she did not even know who she was... a miko named Kagome...

She watched as he raised his claw. A drop of blood dripped from the razor sharp nail on his index finger. It seemed like forever as Kagome watched it fall; the flickering light of a candle's hazy flame blinking across the surface.

The sun had all but sunk behind the looming mountains in the east and only a few glimmers of its departing light leaked into the large, fair-sized room. The faint scent of incense lingered in the air, and flickering candlelight played with dim shadows across the walls.

She did not know her past... but Naraku did...

And according to him she was some kind of miko whose power he wanted.

"Hai, your power," Naraku's silk-like voice broke through her thoughts, "but you are entirely useful, in spite of this, my miko."

_Opps, did I say that aloud?_ she wondered, startled for a moment.

"What?"

A chillingly wicked laugh surrounded her but she found that she rather... liked it. It was soft and made of velvet like his voice. It caressed her senses amid its icy embrace; however, _she _found it to be quite pleasant. So very enticing...

The burgundy-eyed hanyou leisurely lowered his claw and pressed the bloodstained nail to her pale lips. He gently followed the curve of her bottom lip as if fascinated by it. His wine red gaze regarded the blood that was left in his claw's wake as it trailed across the miko's lip.

Blood. Her blood. Her ningen blood.

Interesting...

He slowly loosened his hold on her weak form and gracefully went back to his original position by her blue-shaded futon. Crossing his legs, he lazily held her in his smoldering scarlet gaze, not bothering to answer her question. He smirked as he observed that she refused to be the one to back down first. Even _while_ the small cut from his claw still bled and her lips were smudged with the crimson stain of her own blood.

A path of wine red jaggedly trickled down her cheek, lazily dripping onto the various blue blankets.

Finally, she blinked and turned her head to watch the faint swirls of smoke drift from the incense pot in an erratic course.

"Did I ever do something?" she muttered, transfixed on the line of smoke as it traveled in curving arcs and unnatural swirls.

Naraku continued to gaze at her, musing as to what direction she was taking this... conversation, now.

Not even looking at the half demon beside her but maintaining her dark sapphire gaze on the twirls and swirls of the ashen smoke, she elaborated, "Did I ever do something ever so wrong and vile to deserve the life, I cannot even recall, but still have been thrust into? Can you tell me that at least... since you say you know so much about me?"

Naraku was silent for a moment, contemplating her words with a sadistically amused expression dancing in his still ruby eyes.

"Have you forgotten that I am the embodiment of all that is wicked and evil, Kagome?"

"Kagome..." she murmured and then did something unexpected: she laughed.

"Oh, of course you are the great _half demon Naraku_ that enjoys the suffering and torture of others," she smiled, and Naraku was somewhat amazed once again.

And... pleased. Yes, this miko was indeed very worthy of his attention. After all, she was one of the key elements in his defeat at the last battle against the inu hanyou's ragtag group.

And now... she was _his_.

"Naraku, will you tell me about my past?" she asked, her gaze still following the silent wisps of curling smoke.

He paused, his interest spiking. "And why would I do such a thing?"

She shrugged innocently, sending him a brilliant smile.

A truly amusing yet intriguing women.

"You say I'm a miko and I remember to some people I was, but still... everything is trapped behind a haze I can't seem to get through. I can remember certain things but not everything..." she trailed off, "Kagome... I don't even recall my own name or any family I might have had or my friends... except for those eyes the color of molten golden and... those eyes... somehow... betrayed me."

She was silent for a moment and then abruptly turned to look at him.

"Can you tell who deceived me and how or why?" Her usually innocently sweet, caring voice was suddenly icy and cold as a winter night. Anger burned in her midnight blue eyes like a swirling storm that beguiled Naraku with its hollow sincerity.

Naraku smirked, thoroughly pleased by this.

"Hai..." Naraku drawled, already beginning to enjoy the anguish he was going to inflict, "You were betrayed by a hanyou, named Inuyasha, an... enemy of mine, and someone you _loved_." He sneered slightly at the last word.

The miko faintly flinched but the hard, cold expression stayed in her dark cerulean eyes.

"You are the reincarnation of his past lover and he repeatedly saw her when he gazed upon you for you look like her twin. Perhaps that is why he deceived you," Naraku's velvet voice was laced with mockery and disdain.

Unexpectedly, a surge of icy pain seemed to crash down upon the miko's mind, appearing from absolutely nowhere. She gasped as if drowning amongst the rolling waves as they slowly receded only to come crashing back down on her mind once again.

Flashes. Sparks. Slashes.

_Inuyasha...those golden eyes... she could see them... through the burning fire that surrounded the blood-filled field... rain poured... blood ran... her friends... gone... golden eyes... not golden anymore... red... crimson red... not Naraku's... more vile... more hateful... a voice demanding for her to give it the jewel... golden eyes... not golden anymore... crimson eyes... Kagome... slash... stab... by... him... betrayed... golden... such treachery... by him... stabbed... killed... by... him... the one she loved... pain..._

Kagome jolted, gasping for breath. A million lights came before her eyes and then disappeared. She clutched the wrapped abdomen wound underneath her blue yukata.

Kagome steadied her breathing as she stared at the red droplets blotting her blue blanket. She kept seeing visions and flashes that she could not understand. Yes, some revelations she could comprehend, but most of it was vivid gibberish that she could not retain the smallest amount of sense from.

"Naraku," she murmured, looking at him, "I still do not remember much... but..." She hesitated.

"He, whoever he is, is not who he was before... when I did love him..." she slowly said, trying to understand her own words. What a pain it was to have such feelings and emotions of such events or things when spoken about, but not to remember those exact events or things as they happened.

"I know you play games and at the moment I'm am just a pawn in some twisted game of yours... most likely revenge... but..." Kagome looked down at her injuries, her brow slightly furrowed.

Naraku smirked. He almost had her in his claws. Perfect.

Standing up with natural grace—his elegant clothes rippling soundlessly—he looked down at her crouched form; his eyes glittered a vibrant blood red.

He could taste it in his mouth: her submission or as much as submission he could get from her at this point... for now, at least. And revenge. Delicious revenge.

_Idiotic fool Inuyasha to leave one such as her_... _to be captured within my claws._

"You are Kagome Higurashi, a miko from the unknown," spoke Naraku, his alluring voice lined velvet temptation, "and I plan on shaping you into one who will conquer and rule this pitiful land with higher supremacy."

She stared at her injuries—each wound a nameless memory—then slowly shifted her gaze to the dark wine red droplets staining the pale blue blanket and finally stopped at the curling swirls of pallid smoke. Her blood had been spilt by the half demon Naraku many times, but it had never hurt as much as the betrayal of one she could not even remember.

Oh, and that was the damned problem. She could remember very little but feel every pain and anguish she had ever endured. She felt and sensed every little lie and every deceit thrown at her by people she had loved and trusted. People that were not supposed to turn their backs on her and leave her to the twisted claws of fate. People that she could not even recall familiar faces for... yet...

Why did they leave her to be saved by Naraku?

Naraku...

Naraku... he had never lied to her. Yes... he would not tell her things and withhold information, but he had never necessarily lied to her since she had woken up. He had even saved her. Her supposed enemy... had saved her life.

For Kagome knew she would have inevitably died if her injuries had not been tended too. And he was not exactly an enemy. He was the enemy of her love—no the hanyou, Inuyasha. After all, she could not call him her 'love' when she could not even remember him or his face—except for the anger she felt towards him for his betrayal to her.

And again, Naraku had not at this point in time ever lied to her. He'd actually been rather brutally honest. Something she greatly appreciated.

And since he was not _directly_ her enemy though she knew she despised him in her past, however...

_Wasn't there the saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend?_ Kagome mused.

So... if that were true...

A bright smile lit up the face of the miko as she broke her gaze from the spellbinding coils of ashen smoke.

A smile that resembled Naraku's to the tiniest bit of extent.

Kagome turned her head to look directly into the scarlet irises of Naraku; her ebony locks gently swayed at the abrupt movement.

"I will not be your naive pawn, but it is my duty to correct what has been done so..." she paused, taking a deep breath, "I will accept your offer, Naraku."

Her voice was soft, however in spite of this, the innocence—which had always overwhelmed her sapphire eyes—was at the present overshadowed with the darkness the taunting world had thrust upon her.

As she took the sharp claw extended towards her, so sealed the fate of vast lands of the Sengoku Jidai. The Feudal Era of Japan would learn that to betray the miko Kagome Higurashi would shift the thin line the between evil and good. And it would always shift to the young one's liking.

Everything inferior and ultimately evil would fall down to their knees before her and cry for mercy. It was just the question of whether mercy would be given...

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

And a hanyou named Inuyasha had become the enemy.

* * *

End Notes: So what'd ya think? Hope I didn't disappoint anyone. Yeah, I know the last bit was a tad melodramatic, but eh... what can I do? Plz, pretty, pretty pleez leave a review and tell me. I always enjoy anything you guys leave, though fare warning, flames will get you absolutely no where but anything else I totally adore! 

Constructive criticism, comments questions, mistakes, etc... I love it all!

Yeah... sorry 'bout any grammar/spelling mistakes...

Umm... that's about it...

Erm... until next time... arigatou and bye-bye for now...

(: DarkRoseBlood

_(edit : 9.8.06 : some quick format editing and removal of irritating fangirl japanese)_


	3. Night Brings Wicked Demons

Author Notes: Err... hi... -ducks rotten cabbage- Okay, okay maybe I am a tad late in updating, ne. -ducks flying tomatoes- Ahhh! I get your point, geez... But it's not totally my fault! Umm... mostly... well, school has been really hectic and I failed one of my stupid finales so my parents nearly blew the roof! (wow, isn't that such a cliche phrase) And I had to figure out my screwed up timeline for this fic... I think I got it right now...

Anyways, I am not _overly _pleased with this chapter but I needed it as I try to create some sort of plot. :digs under huge pile of undone homework with doodles of chibi Naraku and Sesshou... oh, there's some of Inuyasha too... scribbled all over it: I know I left it here somewhere...

Oh, well I find it later... Hmm, this chap mostly focuses on Kagome and... yeah, that's about all I have to say...

**rating: R** Right now, it's probably more of a PG-13 but later there will be more blood, gore, violence etc... Don't like, don't read. Simple, really.

**disclaimer:** Yes... yes... wait... nope... still don't... damn it...

**pairing: **Naraku/Kagome

Ahh! Thank you so much to all the ppl who reviewed! I love you guys so freakin' much! I don't know what I would do without you ppls... You guys are a great encouragement! Umm... yes... review responses are at the bottom! Arigatou:P

Erm... hai... without further ado...

* * *

**Thy Soul of Sin  
**By: DarkRoseBlood

_Chapter Three  
__Night Brings Wicked Demons_

Kagome—even if that wasn't truly her name it was better than nothing—padded down the silent halls of the castle, trying with all her ability to not make a sound as she sneaked out of her elegant holdings in search of the kitchens. It was perhaps past midnight and the shadows of night played across the classy halls in an eerie fashion. Of course, she was not deterred in the least by the wandering silhouettes of unknown phantoms, which most of the time were merely a vase or table. So she was certainly not to be bothered, not when her starving stomach growled for the blessed nourishment of food.

Izumi had visited earlier, bringing her a small dinner, but as far as Kagome was concerned, it had definitely not been enough to satisfy her, no matter what the healer said about not over-eating while she was still injured.

So here she was sneaking down the classily furnished halls of some unknown castle that was to be her residence until further notice. Not that the miko particularly minded.

After all, who would really mind living in an elegant shrine castle while being treated like some kind of royalty? Although she was somewhat disturbed by Izumi's new title for her and had tried to dissuade Izumi from calling her 'Lady Kagome' or 'milady' rather unsuccessfully.

The castle was not overly large: only one story, and it stood upon a cliff that over-looked the rest of the shrine and farther below the shrine lay the peaceful village. All the same, the castle was extravagantly furnished with the most classy and expensive accessories and fittings, easily identifying it as belonging to quite a wealthy Lord. Of course, the current Lord was a slightly sadistic half-demon, but Kagome did not mind in the least.

Though she was rather curious as to how Naraku had become Lord of this Temple, but she assumed he had made up some lie to Izumi and villagers, which oddly did not bother Kagome.

However, she had pushed the strange feeling aside when she had ventured out into the lovely gardens outside her room.

Her room had a small porch that led to a beautiful front garden, and on the other side of the luscious garden, vine-warped stone steps led down to the Temple. The whole valley had a rather scenic view that Kagome absolutely adored.

With a small smile, Kagome continued down the quiet halls, her bare feet softly thumping against the wooden floor.

_To tell the truth, I really wouldn't mind living a rather normal life as the Shrine Guardian of this Temple,_ she mused absentmindedly.

Turning another corner, the miko came upon a shoji door and slowly slid it open. She smiled in delight as she looked upon the large kitchen.

_Finally._

With a small giggle she hurriedly lit some candles and walked towards the nearest cupboards ready to ransack their holdings of anything edible.

Her pale blue yukata gently rustled as she started to open and close various cupboards, pulling out several items and packages. Gathering up all the items in her arms, she carried them to the counter beside the black, shiny stove.

_Wow, this stove is really old-fashioned,_ she vaguely mused before pausing, wondering where in the world that thought had come from. The stove was actually a fairly new creation, and only the upper-class nobles had them while the commoners just cooked over an open fire.

Shaking her head to clear her mind, she proceeded to chop the various vegetables, then proceeded in salting and seasoning them. Afterward, she stirred all of them in a coal-black pot with stringy white noodles, unknowingly humming to herself.

Soon enough, Kagome had happily sat down on a fluffy pillow, placing her steaming bowl of soup on the low wooden table before her.

Sighing pleasantly as she smelled the tasty aroma of scrumptious soup that wafted into her nostril, Kagome began to hungrily yet slowly devour the steaming bowl.

Her sapphire eyes wandered to the rich hangings draped across the delicate white screen walls. They were elegantly woven with precise care, each stitch communing with the next in perfect harmony.

On every hanging a beautiful women was depicted, standing peacefully beneath a Sakura tree, gazing at the star-filled sky with a wistful look.

_These must have been the mikos, who had watched over the Shrine previously,_ Kagome reflected as she stared at the beautiful women with a slightly longing gaze.

_I have this feeling that my life before I woke up unable to remember anything was not as simple as a normal woman's was. But why?_ she wondered._ Why couldn't my life be a simple pleasant one? These... flashes... of my past... they show me such horrible events. Could my life really have been such a hideous one filled with deceit and pain?_

The miko sighed, slowly stirring her soup in silent circles.

She despised not remembering where she had come from or any of her friends and family yet... from these flashes that had plagued her she wasn't so sure that she really _wanted _to remember.

Why couldn't she just live a normal, peaceful life as this Shrine's protector? Why couldn't she be the shrine's miko that fought fiercely against the nasty demons, which often attacked the nearby village, according to Izumi? Why not?

She did not remember anything from her past so why try to? Especially when the miko wasn't so sure the she truly wanted to.

However, despite her misgivings, something told her she still had duties and obligations that had yet to be fulfilled. Duties and obligations that if they were to remain unfulfilled, it would mean terrible pain and disastrous outcomes to those involved and even ones whom were not.

And Kagome did not ever want to cause anybody pain or anguish. All she wanted was peace and tranquility sweeping over the land in a great wave of serenity.

Even though, she had conspired with someone who she did not feel that he was exactly the kindest of people but...

There was something about him... the half-demon Naraku... something... a feeling that she did not understand.

Perhaps, it was because the miko knew that no matter how much she desired peace for the land, it would never come. Some form of evil would always lurk, always hidden from the human eye, yet still forever there. Or perhaps, it was the betrayal she knew she had experienced from someone she had cared deeply about.

Kagome knew she was now not as naive to think that everything in this world was made up of black and white—albeit she had thought that at one time—but not anymore.

No... not anymore.

And she couldn't even remember the events that had changed her from the totally innocent and naive girl she had once been, before her memory loss. Yet... it had been something deep and treacherous enough for her to accept the aid of the hanyou Naraku... someone she knew she had formerly loathed.

And now... now... well Kagome did not exactly know how she felt towards him. Thus far, he had not mistreated her—taunted her, played games with her, yes... but they were not acts that held any malice... just slight amusement and—dare she say it—an ever so subtle teasing?

But that was not the evil hanyou she recalled... yet what exactly did she recall from her flashes? She held no distinct memories of Naraku, so who was she to judge him when she wouldn't have even been able to recall his name if he hadn't told her it...

_Naraku..._

Kagome's continued to swirl the delicious soup in her bowl distractedly as she distantly seeped into darkness...

Who was she to judge someone when she did not even know who she, _herself_, was...?

All of her... her... _flashes_...

Vague ideas... that held no real meaning... except for...

The betrayal and hurt Kagome realized to be true. The betrayal by the traitorous hanyou named Inuyasha. The miko knew somewhere deep within the remaining remnants of her heart the golden-eyed hanyou had shattered, _he_—not Naraku but _Inuyasha_—had done the unforgivable. What exactly had he done that had been so unforgivable?

_She slid farther and farther..._

She did not know. However, it had to be something truly atrocious to not have been able to ever gain her forgiveness again, for the miko knew she was probably one of the most forgiving people in the world.

Yet he had done something so wicked and cruel to never be able to regain her forgiveness again.

He had done the intolerable and betrayed her while _Naraku _had saved her—true, probably for his own means but...

She still 'allied' with him, so to speak, when she knew she would never again alley with the amber-eyed hanyou...

_Stabbing pain... in the blackness of an endless abyss... sinking... sinking... forever sinking... _

A shot of scorching pain sliced through Kagome's chest...

_Wild crimson eyes chased her... hunted her... she ran and ran... she could not get away... gleaming white fangs had come to devour her... it was going to get her... no, no... she could not escape..._

A sharp cry of pain and fear was muffled against the wooden table...

_Pitch blackness... it—the demon... it was going to eat her... swallow her... consume her heart, her mind... her soul..._

An erratic twitch reverberated through Kagome's body as her dull nails scraped and clawed at the smooth, cool wood of the table... as if trying to flee...

_It was there... before her... in the blackness... looming tauntingly... razor sharp fangs dripping with unrestrained hunger... she had lost... she was trapped... no escape...the depraved crimson eyes lunged at her... she screamed..._

Unnoticed, a thin trickle of blood dribbled down the miko's chin as she unconsciously bit on her bottom lip...

_Torture... kill her... kill her crimson-eyed demon so she would not have to endure this pain any longer... wait... huh... a light... no, not a light... but something... come to rescue her perhaps? _

_...Scarlet eyes surrounded by a wavy curtain of black that differed from the demon, which ripped her apart... and she felt no more pain... _

Kagome awoke with a startled gasp.

What in Kami had that been? It had felt so real... She could still feel those glaring crimson eyes trying to devour her... but what about those scarlet eyes? She didn't think they were the same... no they were not...

With a tired shake of her head, Kagome wiped the dark red blood off her chin with the light blue edge of her yukata sleeve. She seriously needed to get some sleep.

Kagome finished her soup—trying her best to slurp up every last drop—and unfocusedly stood up, her attention still on other matters. She walked back into the kitchen, placed the dirty bowl into the empty dish basin and quietly strolled out into the shadowy hall once more, making sure to extinguish the flickering flames of the lit candles beforehand.

She tip-toed down the, as always, strangely silent hall; ominous shadows tittered across her young but lovely features and pale blue yukata that did nothing to conceal her slender figure as she passed beneath their winding dance.

After many more shadow-filled hallways and misleading turns thesleepy and contently full miko finally arrivedat the familiar shoji doors decorated with painted pale blue and silver Sakura blossoms. Sliding the ornate doors open, she entered her classily styled room and slipped beneath her warm blankets ready to drift often into the blissful release of sleep.

However, before Kagome finally sank into night's divine embrace one last thought floated languidly through her mind than slowly disappeared along with the rest of her musings in the late hours of darkness.

_What's more, I do not feel the slightest fear when I look into Naraku's blood scarlet eyes yet a chilling fear settles in my heart when I see flashes of those... those... eyes... that were once a beautiful golden but... no, I do not like those eyes..._

Crimson eyes that would devour her...

**.  
. ... .  
.**

The lively wind whipped through her pitch-black hair, filtering through every strand in blissful delight. It was cool and pleasant against her pale face as she soared far above the dark forests shrouded in night far below her. It swirled and flowed with her every move, obeying her every command yet it was ever so... _free._

That was what the wind meant to her: _freedom_.

Freedom: an ultimately heavenly theory that she desired greater than anything else.

Something that was there—so visible, so close—yet not, in truth, there at all. It was so beautiful and breathtaking, however, thus far it continued to taunt her, just out of the reach of her clawed grasp.

Freedom.

So glorious this notion of freedom... this belief she so desired that constantly jeered at her, dancing its feral song just beyond her razor sharp nails by a mere obstacle, which she could not overcome.

_Naraku._

Oh, how she despised that loathsome creature with all her... heart.

Now, wasn't that sardonic?

It was because of her damned heart that he held in his half-breed claws, she could not escape and relish in her one desire of freedom.

The stars twinkled madly at her, seeming to glare down at the lone demoness gliding along on an enlarged, pink feather that usually resided in her ebony hair. They burned into her heartless soul, mocking her with their freedom she could not possess.

_Damn you Naraku, to the deepest depths of all the seven Hells!_ her mind screamed as she sailed among the ever-moving wind.

So free...

Even when the cursed jewel the Shikon no Tama was not within his vile grasp he still held his taunting power over her!

_But... at least... he does not have the jewel... but it is no better in that hanyou Inuyasha's claws who cannot even properly kill Naraku..._

The Wind Sorceress grimaced slightly as she remembered the last battle between Naraku and Inuyasha. A very bloody battle and rather pleasant too... especially when her wind blades lashed across the ookami youkai Kouga's pitifully helpless body.

Such a delightful feeling it was to feel his pathetic life slowly leak out of his just-as-pathetic body.

Yet that pleasure would not last long as the battle took an undesirable turn when Inuyasha's wench had struck Naraku with her sacred arrow.

Then the worthless half-breed Inuyasha had slashed at Naraku in his weakened state with that fang-sword of his: the Tetsusaiga.

She remembered regaining her consciousness to a battlefield bathed in the numerous body parts of demons and blood. Naraku was no where in sight, and Kagura remembered catching the scent of Inuyasha and the rest of his ragtag group nearby.

Drenched in near black blood she easily masked her scent and silently spied on the bloodied and wounded group, hearing every word as it was spoken.

A moment of shock had stirred in Kagura's stomach as she heard them speak of Naraku's final destruction. Even the lecherous monk's kazanna was gone from his right palm.

They truly believed he was gone; all of them thought to have finally destroyed the half-demon Naraku who had terrorized their lives for so long.

Well everyone except for, possibly, Inuyasha's half-brother Sesshoumaru, who had aided the ragtag group in the battle against Naraku. The Demon Lord was always the stoic, suspicious, skeptic youkai.

And rightfully so. Perhaps, it was that about him that enticed Kagura so. And as for the rest of Inuyasha's pathetic ragtag troop...

_Fools,_ Kagura thought.

For if Naraku had genuinely existed no longer than she wouldn't have been returning to him, unwillingly mind you, at this moment.

Alas, she was and that meant the stupid inu Inuyasha had not eradicated Naraku. That Naraku still lived, though perhaps not in complete health, yet still alive... somewhere.

And... that he still held her heart in his half-breed claws. He still held her life. He still held her freedom.

Damn him.

Kagura soured across through the vast mountain range far in the Northern Lands following the wretched call of her heart and Naraku. She had been able to resist it for a touch over two weeks—indicating how injured Naraku had been—but the pain had been too great thus determining her fate of returning to the wretched half-breed.

The Wind Sorceress was certain that her white-haired sister, Kanna of the Void, was already by Naraku's side.

She also could sense that Naraku had been severely weakened from the battle with Inuyasha, and that was why he had fled far into the North and deep within the mountains where hardly anything resided except a few villages and vicious youkai.

Not that Inuyasha and his little imprudent gang would come searching for Naraku anyways since they believed him destroyed.

_Brainless idiots._

The Wind Sorceress took a sudden dive and silently steadied her feather above a still valley bathed in the surrounding mountains' shadows. With a swirl of pink smoke and wind, she stood poised before the wooden entrance to a large, beautiful—yet somewhat dark and mysterious bathed in the moon's pallid light—castle.

Her layered kimono rippled somewhat in the steady wind circulating throughout the mountains.

A slim, red and pink fan was clutched tightly in her claw, its tip resting on her chin as she surveyed the abode Naraku had acquired. If she dared to think it, the residence looked a little more elegant and... _fancier_.

Not such as an evil and forbidding place as the last, especially with the exquisite garden, which had begun to bloom on one side of the somewhat large castle. And this house was part of a Shrine that watched over the village below it and generally the rest of the few villages that inhabited the vast snow-covered mountains.

Naraku had never concerned himself with assets such as ravishing gardens or other classy furnishings to equip his castle with before. Nor had he ever taken up a residence in a Shrine where surely _mikos _dwelled that would sense his aura.

So why now?

Kagura entered the over-extravagant abode and noiselessly walked down one of the many halls noticing many more unnecessary accessories that lay about the hall. She sniffed the air and realized Naraku was not present in the castle, and she sensed Kanna to be somewhere far off on the other side of the large house, but another smell caught the Wind Sorceress's attention.

A very peculiar scent indeed.

This being—whoever it was—smelled like a ningen yet something else accented its powerful scent and aura.

Her sharpgarnet eyes narrowed as she followed the sickeningly sweet scent to its origin. Her figure stopped as she came to a shoji door with pale blue and silver flowers painted across it.

_How strange,_ Kagura thought as her mind reeled over the scent, which came from behind the door. It was rather familiar yet it had changed somehow. She could not place it to any person she knew.

A clawed hand slid open the flower-painted door and the Wind Sorceress stepped inside a lavishly decorated room. The demoness's eyes widened, however, as her vibrant crimson orbs stared at the figure of a ningen woman standing in the doorway across from her.

The figure stood there outlined by the brilliant moonlight, which poured through the open doorway, looking out into the garden beyond. A ningen woman with flowing raven hair and natural, midnight blue highlights elucidated by the waning moon's pallid shine.

The silky blue cloth of the girl's yukata gently swayed in a delicate breeze, which circulated throughout the room, creating an unearthly aura around the mysterious woman.

Kagura's blazing red eyes narrowed as she wondered why this ghost-like ningen would be in Naraku's castle.

And by the looks of it, she was treated like some kind of noble of the household since this gorgeous room must have had to be hers. Furthermore, the pale blue yukata that adorned her petite form was not one a commoner would wear since they would most likely be unable to afford such fine apparel.

Perhaps, Naraku had taken a mistress?

No, that was utterly absurd. Why in the world would Naraku take a mistress?

Kagura knew he neither desired nor needed one. Especially to this ningen girl whose aura vibrated of something abnormal and mystic. ...the glimmering aura of a miko, yet something more... disturbing and forbidding.

Or perhaps, this was an ideal reason to keep such an enigmatic girl.

Though Kagura slightly pitied anyone who was condemned to be the mistress of the malicious hanyou. Of course, that would be after Kagura would have ripped her to shreds.

Why? To cause Naraku hurt—if the hanyou could feel such a thing, that is.

But that still did not answer her question as to who this girl was.

And as if the moonlight-bathed obscurity of an ethereal priestess had sensed Kagura's musings she suddenly turned around.

Angered and bewildered ruby eyes met the striking sapphire eyes of a girl the Wind Sorceress knew very well.

Very well indeed.

"_Inuyasha's wench." _

* * *

End Notes: Hmm? So what did you think? Ne, spot a plot building somewhere in there? Or did you just miss the NarKag tension? Don't worry, Naraku will be back... 

As always, sorry 'bout any grammar/spelling mistakes...

Okay, ppl REVIEW and tell me what you thought! I love anything you guys throw at me (except flames, of course, since they are of no use to me) but constructive criticism or anything else is always welcome!

Reviews are food for the starving authoress!

Hehe, I'll try to get the fourth chap up soon... hopefully...

Just pleeeeeeeeezzzzzz Review! I love you forever and ever... at least for pretty long time, heh...

Okay, now onto...

* * *

**Reviews:**

**Emerald-Eyed-Faye**: Hey, thanx!

**Pharaun:** Awe, thanx so much! My fic... well written? Wowies...

**crypticgoddess:** Hee! Thanx a bunches! I so enjoy it went reviewers name some specific qualities they like about my fic:)

**Chibi-Midnight-Sakai:** Thanx!

**DarkAngelBabe:** Heh, thanx:)

**NarakuYugureHimitsu:** I did! I did! Thanx a bunches:P

**Skitzoflame:** Me neither! Hehe. Thanx!

**steph:** Sexy? Hmm... never was my intention, but if you think so... Heh. Thanx!

**RageofInferno325:** Hmm... I dunno, but I have the same problem too... hehe. Thanx:)

**ingra-of-mordor:** I read your fic and simply loved it! Heh, thanx so much:P

**Sano99:** Yes, I suppose Kagome is acting a tad rash but remember she really doesn't remember anything or anyone. Thanx a bunches:)

**Reality:** Thanx, love the name!

**demoness of the west:** Awe, thanx a bunches! You are far to kind! Smiles:D

Whoa, that took me a long time to write! Thanx so much to all my wonderful reviewers!

Erm... yes... arigatou... and bye-bye for now...

(: DarkRoseBlood

_(edit : 9.8.06 : some quick format editing and removal of irritating fangirl japanese)_


	4. Before Dawn

Author Notes: Awe, yes, I know. Gomen, gomen, I'm lazy, but I _do_ have several reasons for not updating sooner, all of which you have probably heard before and could care less… you just want to read the next chap, ne? Hehe. Okay, but first a few quick little notes. Yes, yes, I hear the groans already. Just bear with me for a sec…

Umm… this chapter might seem a tad different from my others, just a tad. My writing styles constantly change, and I've been recently working with my absolutely awesome English teacher on my writing skills, so I believe my writing style is slightly different from previous chaps. Anyways, I'm kinda experimenting with my writing so this chap has a bit more over flowery-ish language, at least, I think so. But I did make it extra long (over 4000 words not counting my overly long a/n's) just for you guys! Hope you enjoy!

**disclaimer:** Nope. Trust me, ppl wouldn't _want_ me to own it…

**notes:**  
_Jou-chan –_ Kinda like: little girl; honey (though the way Kagura says it, it is in a mocking/deriding tone.)

Oh, yes, thanx so much for all the wonderful reviews! They are truly what keeps me going! Responses at the bottom! Arigatou!

Without further ado...

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**Thy Soul of Sin  
**By: DarkRoseBlood

_Chapter Four  
__Before Dawn _

She was lost.

Forsaken by her very own memories…

Twisted in her mind, she possessed no past, no duties that callously bound her to icy, rusting chains, no obligations that scornfully ensnared her in wretched, deformed tentacles; yet still, her pitiful existence was governed by unknown treacheries of a past long misplaced beneath the wintry fog residing in her mind.

One of which, forgotten and trapped within jeering, hostile depths of an endless mist, possessed a fabricated reality. Perhaps, deep into the dreary slumbers of night, some hope peeped swiftly and silently from the foreboding white mist, which practically screamed depraved and cruel death to those who dared wander in its ashen-white fog. Yes, perhaps once in a full moon, could she almost reach, _almost_ stroke her forlorn memories; yet alas, each time the hopeful miko became within a bare inch of the blinding lights that were her lonesome memories they hastily scampered back into the swirling haze of ashen smog that lingered tauntingly at the back her mind, languidly, _deliberately_, shrouding everything from her.

Haunting, black-ash clouds which mocked her, spitefully amused at her own disgraceful helplessness. Her own past.

And to be honest, Kagome wouldn't have minded not remembering the shocking, horrific deeds of the blood-filled past she had just barely glimpsed in the speeding flashes that often plagued her aching mind. Yet she could not live a _normal _life, for damned obligations to the damned world held her back, gagged her with a slimy cloth swathed in burgundy blood, chained her down to the duties she could **_not _**even _remember_.

Starlit eyes overflowing with unanswered questions, Kagome gazed at the inky black sky alit with twinkling balls of burning fire scattered across the dark night like glittering fireflies. Fireflies that deemed it necessary to _madden _her with the omniscient brilliance. Disdainfully, they sneered at her with their overwhelming superiority, flaunting it high over her trivial existence.

With their fiery radiance, they retained a past. Deriding those inferior to their omnipotent luster, the taunting stars possessed a meaning, a purpose. They saw all things that played out across the small sphere made of burning rock called Earth. Merely an insignificant mass of volcanic rock that languidly floated in space and time—so immaterial to the blazing star of fire and gas that if this feeble planet were to come close enough to its ulterior rays, the dominant star would burn the pitiful thing dubbed Earth to a blackened crisp.

Not that it would waste its time with something as trifling as a planet.

With a wishful sigh, Kagome leaned against the wooden panel that bordered the small doorway from her room to the scenic courtyard.

She felt so… so minuscule, so inconsequential beneath the raging gazes of the millions of fiery stars that placidly dotted the midnight sky.

So trivial… like she, herself, held no meaning… no purpose…

And even the moon—which was barely one-third the size of Earth—seemed to shine with untold luminance. Merely a mortal being of flesh and blood, she paled greatly in comparison. Hell, she wasn't even in the same league.

Though wasn't it ironic how… if… if… she just… simply stretched—_stretched_ out her hand toward the sky very, _very_ slowly, she could seemingly capture the reflective orb of pallid light within her unearthly pale palm.

Oh, what she would give to be able to reach out into the black night sky and grab a hold of such beautiful radiance! Oh, such lovely ascendancy…

Such exquisite and lovely ascendancy to hold and perhaps even own… for just… for just a mere moment of pure, dazzling Heaven…

In abrupt haste, Kagome instanly drew her hand back as she realized it was outstretched in futile hope, indeed, to capture the glimmering moon within her palm.

Such a silly, childish thing to do, really.

Hope, when there seemed to be no hope present.

But alas, that was who she was—well… perhaps that wasn't entirely true either, for she really didn't know who she was…

Just another trvial existance occupying precious space in the eternal universe… no meaning… no purpose… no obligations…

…however, if that were true than why did she feel shackled down by the hurtful and acerbic chains of unknown obligations to a past she held no recognition of…

And it all comes crashing back to that ever-present thought of 'Who was she?'

As the raven-haired miko stepped farther out onto the stone veranda, cool and quiet wind blew soothingly around her ankles and thin blue yukata, like a fainst whisper of cool breath.

Had she ever gazed at the pale almighty moon with such fascination before? Had she ever wished upon a fallen star for some childish dream, which had an immense probability of never coming to pass? Had she ever simply stared off into the black void of time and space, becoming entrapped within its cosmic nothingness?

Had she ever laughed and giggled along with her friends amongst an extensive field of freshly bloomed wildflowers? Or had she ever frolicked carelessly amid their vibrant splashes of lively petals? Or had she, perhaps, purely lounged blissfully in their grassy confines, watching the day go by, while trying to discern the numerous different animals and objects in the fluffy white clouds above?

Could someone residing somewhere in this sweeping land even tell her? Had she? Had she a blessed life with loved ones to share her special secrets with?

No… she supposed not… after all, she was a miko.

A miko who remembered nothing except for blood, screams, and death.

Vile red blood that vividly stained her mind in a treacherous concord of never-ending screams and merciless death.

What taunting irony: a miko who no one cared about enough to worry where she was or how she was doing. A miko who cared for everyone, but whom no one cared for personally.

Well, except for possibly Naraku…

Ironic wasn't it, how the scarlet-eyed hanyou was the only person she had contact with, so far, of whom she actually remembered, and he, at least, seemed to show the slightest bit of care for her.

Slightest, mind you.

And another satirical thought, as well: the only thing she really remembered about him is his haunting, devious eyes the exact hue of sinful blood…

So twisted. So wicked. So… _beautiful…_

Every single detail was warped in a perfidious vortex that swirled around her amid blaring winds of darkness, though she stood perfectly still in the center untouched by the relentless spirals. Simply watching the world continue to exist without her, she remained entrapped within the heart of it all.

Entangled, merely watching… watching… unable to do anything, caught in a loop…

Time stood perfectly still. Growing neither older nor younger for her—she simply remained, ever observing as the world carried on… and she…

She solely halted in a standstill, in the eye of the raging storm, having neither a past to cling nor any future to hope for—no dream to childishly base her life on…

Nothing. Nothingness.

So ultimately warped…

What did she have left in the world to believe?

Hope.

Faith.

Courage.

Trust.

Love…

What did all these damned emotions, these damned things—these fucking _words_ truly mean to her?

What? What! WHAT!

For that was what they were: merely words that held no true meaning to her.

Merely words—merely wet ink staining crisp white paper…

Nothing was able to hold any meaning for her because she, _herself_, held no meaning…

Nothing… nothing… she was nothing…

Simply a miko who had seen too much of the bloody fucking world and held no desire to see anymore of its vile corruption.

At least, that was she believed… after all, she still did not know who she was…

To have no memory, no purpose, no reason to fight… no reason to give her life for… no loved one to die for…

Though she somehow, she had a feeling… her life was not _her own_ to give…

Melodiously, a mocking whisper murmured tenderly in her head that she existed to correct a mistake she could not remember—that the young priestess remained alive and not brutally mutilated beneath some lush green berry bush because, and only because, she had a duty to fulfill and a mistake to correct.

A mistake named Inuyasha…

Who was this mysterious hanyou, Inuyasha, that made her heart burn with fiery passion of loathing and disgust? Who was this Inuyasha to make her heart cry out in terrible ache and agony—agony of a love forever lost? Who?

Who was this wretched Inuyasha who could topple everything she had barely begun to rebuild with just one single thought of his name? _Who?_

…When she could not even recall his face…

Kagome gazed at the gorgeous moon so mysterious in all its luminous superiority. She wished to fly as high as the midnight skies, high as the glossy, ghost-like moon.

But what an entirely silly notion that was.

Really…

Her scornful laugh echoed softly into the black night saturated with bitter irony.

_Inuyasha… Inuyasha… _

_Who are you?_

In mystifying puzzlement, a perplexed frown crossed Kagome's pale features.

Either way, whoever this Inuyasha was, the sapphire-eyed miko would make sure he fucking burned in the flaming depths of the seven Hells.

She would make sure he fucking burned for eternity. Burned until he was a blackened hanyou crisp.

Then she would restart it all over and make him burn again… or perhaps drown him within the frigid depths of the raging, icy seas of his own lies and deceit.

Yes… indeed… then she could go on living in this world free as the stunning moon; her rebirth would come with the blackened ashes of this damned hanyou, Inuyasha.

At that time, possibly, she would indeed dominate this cursed land and destroy all those who dared oppose her, like Naraku-sama suggested. It was a tempting idea: to rid this wretched yet beautiful land of such creaturesthat had ever dared to scorn her, _damage _her, _burn _her.

And perhaps, afterward, the fraudulent whispers would stop their tormenting hum. Perhaps…

Senses suddenly spiking on full alert, Kagome froze.

_Someone_ was near, hovering in the room exactly behind her, elegantly painted with pale blue and silver Sakura blossoms.

Slowly, the young miko released a low raspy breath as she tried to prevent the violent shudder that wished to ripple down her spine in great waves.

Eyes narrowed in hostile awareness, Kagome swiftly turned around to gaze at the creature that had intruded on her quiet peace… well, perhaps not precisely _peace_ with all her frustrating thoughts but still…

In violent clash of colors and stubbornness, the miko's azure orbs met those of a bright, vibrant red that easily glittered through the dark, shadowed room. Intense ruby eyes that seemed oddly familiar to Kagome… perhaps similar to Naraku's. Minus the fact that no flashing, black pupils stared back at Kagome in mockery.

Simply red. Dangerous red-an-red eyes that held no deceiving black. Dark blood-red created the pupil with a lighter ruby shade for the iris encircling it, though the difference between the two reds was hardly noticeable. Completely prideful eyes that sparkled with devious mystery.

A precarious mystery that puzzled Kagome.

This woman… this demoness that stood across the Sakura-painted room with an obvious foreboding poise—wariness flared in Kagome's mind as the demoness's sharp features instantly contorted in a menacing snarl as her livid garnet gaze swept over the silent miko.

Soft words saturated with utter malice drifted from the black-haired woman's crimson lips, drifting through the still air that occupied the room: "Inuyasha's _wench_."

Those words sprang at Kagome's mind with biting force, threatening to sweep the earth from beneath her feet that very moment. Biting and spitting, laughing and taunting… devour… _devour_…

_Wench? …Inuyasha's… wench? …who… me? No, she's lying…_ Rapidly angered, the near-seething miko glared at the demoness before her with a bitter gaze of ice . Liar—the demoness, clothed in garments of those with noble blood, had to be lying!

She was nobody's wench! …Right?

"Shut updemoness," Kagome viciously retorted, maintaining her fierce glare on the ebony-haired woman. "You know nothing!"

At her words, the demoness paused for a second, surprise and confusion flickering suspiciously in her narrowed, red-on-red eyes.

What was wrong with the miko-child?

Cherry lips still curved in a slight snarl, the skeptical demoness stared at the miko with a completive look; shadows played across her pale features, intensifying her sharp ruby eyes. With a graceful, clawed hand she raised a sealed fan to her pale face, lightly tapping the black edge on her chin.

"I know nothing, Inuyasha's wench?" she sneered, quirking a thin, black eyebrow in question.

"I am no one's wench, especially to that wretched hanyou_, Inuyasha_," the silently enraged miko sneered back.

For a moment, the moon's silver light shined through the fluttering blue cloth and slithered over the young priestess's lithe form, causing her to appear as something that flowed ethereal radiance… and malicious menace if you were to even dare threaten her power.

Absurd, the ebony-haired demoness mentally scoffedat the preposterous thought; however, there was indeed _something _different about the miko, who spoke the name _Inuyasha_ as if it were a vile blasphemy.

Something icily cold… calm… something forbiddingly precarious… hostile even, yet the miko had always been rather aggressive towards the Wind Sorceress but now… bitter disdain shrouded any innocence the miko had previously held…

With a sudden crack that swiftly sliced through the stagnant air like an assassin's blade, the Wind Sorceress snapped open her pink and red fan, startling the motionless miko who heatedly glared at the demoness with voluminous contempt.

In elegant precise movements, the ebony-haired demoness flung out her sharpened claw, which held the multicolored fan, and a swift gust of find flowed across the room, binding the miko in her position.

Kagome softly gasped as she felt the chilled wind soar around her, easily passing through the delicate blue yukata the fluttered wildly amid the icy breeze. Her bones radiated burning frost as she became rooted to the spot she stood; white fire spread through her veins like a lethal disease, promptly slowing down the blood flow as it turned to harsh, biting ice. Soon, the onna's breath was ragged and harsh while smoky white clouds emerged with each coarse gasp.

Alarmed sapphire eyes stared startled at the dark-haired demoness who leisurely approached the immobile priestess with effortless grace.

Kagome's heart pounded in her ears; her mind screamed in panic. And the wind… the relentless wind stormed around Kagome in a flurry of stinging panic.

"Who are you!" hissed Kagome between labored gasps. Though the chilled miko knew she could move if she really willed herself, it was as if her mind could not completely comprehend the notion.

Pitch-black bangs that hung low over glowing crimson eyes swayed to a stop as the wordless demoness paused two feet away from the frozen miko, carefully surveying the headstrong onnanoko that always followed the _hanyou_, Inuyasha, everywhere. Casually, a light pink blade of her still unfastened fan lay lightly on the demoness's chin.

Something had happened to the miko, the scrutinizing demoness observed. Something that had effected her memory.

_And… something else as well… _the Wind Sorceress reflected,_ Something that tore away her usual irritating, cheery self… replacing it with a resentful and lost shadow that haunts ruthlessly… interesting…_

Crimson-on-crimson eyes wondered what Naraku had schemed up this time, if he had Inuyasha's wench in his possession…

No, not _Inuyasha's wench_, according to the ningen miko.

The Wind Sorceress mentally growled as she pondered these sudden discoveries. She had indeed missed a great many things during her absence into freedom…

Damn it.

Damn it all.

"Do you not know who I am, miko?" the demoness evenly said, her garnet pupils examining the young onna intently.

"No!" she replied irately between wheezy gasps before quieting abruptly as an unsure look appeared on her face. "Am… am I supposed to?" she whispered desolately, a faraway stare glazing over her dark cerulean eyes.

With a slight sneer, the Wind Sorceress grabbed a hold of the Shrine maiden's ice-cold jaw and jerked it to the side. Unpleasant chills shot thornily down Kagome's spine as a clawed thumbnail trailed nonchalantly down the ruby cut blemishing the miko's pale white cheek.

"Do you know, miko, Naraku's half-breed scent shrouds your ningen stench?" sneered the red-on-red eyed demoness, her pupils fixed on the scar.

"Huh…" stuttered the miko, "What about Lord Naraku?"

_Lord Naraku?_ the Wind Sorceress pondered somewhat surprised once again… and amused…

Oh, how Naraku played his malevolent game. No matter how utterly despicable and twisted Naraku's games were, the Wind Sorceress knew the wretched hanyou could indeed play his games well…

"Lord Naraku, is it, jou-chan?" scoffed the Wind Sorceress, releasing her grip on the perplexed, raven-haired girl; the moon's replicated light glittered mockingly in the demoness's bloody gaze.

"Pathetic, miko. Utterly pitiful."

Another sharp snap of her precious fan reverberated through the quiet night like a deadly knife, unleashing the wind's icy hold on the miko. Pale pink robes flailed casually as the swirling wind receded from the miko and drifted back to its mistress.

Burning lungs screamed for air as the young priestess gasped for air, stumbling slightly as her bones were once more able to move. Wide sapphire eyes stared blankly at the tatami mats beneath her bare feet with obscured comprehension.

Raven-black locks of lustrous wavy hair swayed with a sudden ripple as Kagome's sapphire eyes lifted up from the tatami floor to stare at the demoness standing impassively—except for the dark sparkle of mischievous garnet that glittered sardonically in her eyes—before her.

"I suppose I should introduce myself then, miko-child?" Another stabbing snap and a nearly invisible vortex of light purple wind appeared around the smirking demoness as she brought her pink and red fan in a wide, curving arc. "I am Kagura the Wind Sorceress."

Another sharp snap as Kagura brusquely snapped shut her bi-colored fan; the whirling wind swimming throughout the room instantly became still.

Kagome continued to stare at the Wind Sorceress, blinding flashes speeding through her mind, though only a few words flittered through her head. Words that she could comprehend, anyways…

_Kagura… the Wind Sorceress…_

_Kagura of the Wind…_

Kagome recognized that name… from somewhere far, far away… almost in an exclusively separate reality, it seemed like…

A world she had no memory of…

Oh, the pain…

"I… I kn–know… you," she whispered, her narrowed eyes glazing over with something mysterious… as if a forgotten dream, "…from somewhere… somewhere… I don't _know_…"

Kagura gazed at the pathetic onnanoko who now clutched the wooden doorframe as if it were her lifeline. A gentle breeze wafted in from the mountains, fluttering the light blue curtains around the miko.

"Don't you, ningen?" inquired the demoness of the Wind, more of a challenging tone lacing her acidic words than a deriding one. "What is that you truly know? _Lord_ Naraku, you call that hanyou… but why? Think carefully, jou-chan…"

Kagome suddenly lifted her head in a single, fluid movement, startling Kagura for a bare second. Empty, emotionless eyes stared blankly at the Wind Sorceress, not a flicker of sapphire revealing their untold secrets except for a burning iciness that dared to send a shiver down Kagura's spine for a bare moment.

"Perhaps, Wind Sorceress," whispered the vacant voice of the miko, "…The endless yearning for freedom. Perhaps, I know as much as you do. Perhaps, neither of us knows anything at all."

With a sharp swish of cloth and a low sneer, Kagura noiselessly exited the Sakura-painted room, leaving the miko to deal with her own demons. Or possibly, for Kagura to leave and not face those same demons the mindless miko had implied they shared. How preposterous… how preposterous that the stupid wench had indeed hit something in Kagura with her mystifying words.

Eyes narrowed and dark, the Wind Sorceress swiftly padded down the dark corridor in search of her sister Kanna, a silent growl upon her lips. What numerous things, the ebony-haired Wind Sorceress had to tell her sister. Yes, numerous things indeed.

She paused for a moment in the shadowed corridor as a wayward thought unexpectedly flittered through the demoness's mind.

_Perhaps… just perhaps… the miko is not as pathetic as before…_

As she disappeared into the silent hallways' looming shadows, Kagura wondered briefly if Naraku had any idea of how well his new victim could play his twisted game. For Kagura did believe the miko could play Naraku's game better than most.

Briefly, subconsciously, the Wind Sorceress wondered who was indeed the pawn and the player.

The predator and the prey.

She wondered if the young miko actually knew how much power she, in fact, held.

And, possibly, just for the briefest of moments, Kagura would pity the miko's destruction as she fell entangled within Naraku's despicable corruption.

**.  
. ... .  
.**

Honeyed kisses upon her pale milk-white skin—feather-like as they trailed down her neck, biting, nipping, teasing, with silken lips.

_Touch. Breathe. Scream._

Silk petals teased her sensitive flesh with playful licks and pointed, razor sharp fangs grazed her weak, easily scarred skin with such delicate precision, never once scraping so brutally as to stain the luminous pale whiteness of her skin in bloody burgundy.

Gasping, moaning, her back arched.

Clawed hands trailed down her spine, taunting, provoking, eliciting pleading whimpers from her pale white throat of which such sounds had never emerged before.

Crave. Need. Desire.

She longed for these new-found sensations to continue for eternity as she drowned beneath divine addicting kisses woven from the flowing strands of untainted silk. Enwrapping, trapping, devouring, the endless kisses of heavenly cleanliness dared to attempt to purify her corrupted existence. Her soiled being, which surged with everything contaminated and poisoned.

Poisoned by wretched, unholy memories, which lurked sneeringly in some far corner of her mind.

Rose petal lips caressed her own in inconceivable rapture.

Savor. Taste. Ravage.

She knew it. She was impure. She was sullied. She was tarnished. No longer did her bright and unbothered soul sparkle with shimmering integrity.

Tainted was her coal black spirit, yet still, the silken rose petal lips deemed her chaste enough to bless her with their sacred kisses, gliding slowly, deliberately, over her soiled being with such forgiveness for her imperfections. Nimble razor-sharp claws performed a fluid, elegant ballet upon her fair snow-white skin, dragging through rich raven locks.

Sweet, sweet silken kisses upon her rosy virgin lips, eyelids, cheek, neck… relishing, consuming, conquering…

Breathless, a scream erupted from her silent rosy lips. And how she fell, sunk, obscured beneath the ocean of vivid, deep burgundy blood, which flowed with ethereal grace over her unearthly white skin.

Laughing, smiling, throwing her head back in sheer elation as pointed, razor-sharp fangs dug violently into her milky shoulder, cleansing her soul of unknown sins. Her dirty, foul blood painted the silken rose petal lips of her godly savior.

Purity. Ecstasy. Untainted.

Taunting smirk of her fanged savior gazed upon her with malicious serendipity.

Perhaps, her soul could be saved…

Honeyed, sweet, rose petal kisses…

_Touch. Breathe. Scream._

Vile blackness obscured her glittering sapphire vision as Kagome abruptly sat upright, gorgeous raven locks flinging wildly at the sudden movement. Trembling pale hands clutched the snug azure blankets held close to her chest and her mouth was slightly parted as if a miserable scream had been upon her rosy pink lips prior to her brusque awakening as the bewildered miko pondered said awakening.

Night. It was black night—the following night of her strange meeting with the Wind Sorceress. Yes, she remembered that… but what had she been dreaming? Her intensely dark sapphire blue eyes, which sparkled dangerously in the night, narrowed in frustration.

As if trapped behind some hazy veil, Kagome could not recall the previous dream, which had caused her heart to beat so rapidly against her ribcage like a feral storm. Vastly similar to her unknown memories, her mesmeric dream seemed to pulse with hidden life securely behind the hazy, ashen-white fog of which her mind could even begin to venture through lest it become warped among the icy smoke swirls. Sending a fierce shudder down her spine, the alluring sensations of silken rose petals tingled over her unnatural pale skin, but, alas, that was all she recalled from her preceding dream.

Quieting her harsh, rapid breathing, Kagome once again settled among her many cozy indigo coverlets and drifted into her own pleasant little dream world once more. She would muse over her recent unknown dream with its silken rose petals tomorrow.

Speedily becoming lost in the harmonious white clouds of deep sleep, the drowsy priestess—exhuasted from Izumi's constant nurturing earlier that day—noticed neither the dark burgundy blotch soaked into her light blue yukata above the fading bite of razor fangs upon her milky white shoulder, nor the peculiar ghost-like figure silhouetted against the shoji door as it noiselessly slipped out of the silent bedchambers bathed in sinister night with inhuman grace, scarlet eyes glimmering in the motionless darkness.

How amusing it was to taunt and play with his chaste little miko. Amusing indeed.

_Though dreams can be deceiving,  
like faces are to hearts,  
they serve for sweet relieving,  
when fantasy and reality lie too far apart.  
– anonymous –_

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End Notes: Hmm... bad, bad Naraku, but he shouldn't underestimate dear Kagome, now should he:snickers: He really shouldn't. Heh, the last part hadn't actually been in the first draft of this chap, but I decided to add it 'cause I said I would have Naraku in this chap. And, I know, I still have a bad habit of drawing things out for way too long, heh. Hope you enjoyed anyways!

Erm… I'm not exactly sure when I'll update next… sometime soon hopefully, heh. And for those who are wondering about my other fic,'Of a Betrayed Lust…' well, that's kinda on hiatus for awhile 'cause it's horribly written and organized, and I need to rewrite it, but I'm lazy… feh. Gomen!

Now, plz, plz REVIEW! Constructive criticism, mistakes, comments... I'd really appreciate it! I'd want to know what you thought! Tell me! Tell me! Plz! Tell me, if you think this chap or ppl were turning a little too OOC or something and drifting off in Lala Land. Plz!

Arigatou!

* * *

Reviews: 

**crypticgoddess:** Thanx! Tired? Heh, me too. :P

**Sano99:** I know, I know, I'm evil for ending it there, but hopefully you enjoyed what happened in this chap! Thanx a bunches:)

**Loopypants:** Hm, interesting name. :P Thanx!

**Skitzoflame:** Mmm, hope this chap answered your question… or probably brought up more questions, heh. Thanx:)

**Naraku's Dark Soul:** Hee, thanx a bunches:pouts: Not too much of Naraku in this chap, but hopefully you enjoyed it anyways! And he'll be in the next chap a lot more! Yay:D

**ingra-of-mordor:** Thanx! Umm, well, at least somebody noticed that, but I was trying to hint at Inuyasha's eyes being crimson (though sometimes I refer to Kagura's eyes as crimson, also) and referring to Naraku's eyes as scarlet so I don't confuse ppl, which I know I did anyway despite my attempts, hehe. Mmm… just have to wait to find out why:P

**Zena:** Awe, thanx! I will! Heh. :)

**Jasmine Fields:** Heh, thanx a bunches! Hopefully this chap still kept you hooked:P

**shadows-insanity:** Thanx:)

**Steph:** :blushes: Awe, thanx so much! I've really tried to keep everybody IC and it's not an easy job, but hopefully I still did it! You are definitely right, I can't stand it either when Kagome is portrayed as weak and helpless! It's so… so… argh! I just dislike it… a lot. Heh, hopefully I didn't disappoint you and you liked this chap just as much:D

**Inuyasha's Princess17:** You'll find out soon what happened between Inu and Kag and the others, well, hopefully soon. I'm not sure when yet, heh. Yeah, I first read NarKag for something different, but then I found out I loved the pairing, heh. Hopefully, I kept close enough IC for you to keep enjoying it. I really try to keep them IC 'cause I dislike it when they're not. Thanx a bunches:P

**Emerald-Eyed-Faye:** Thanx:)

**neon-animefan:** Really, you're too kind. :blushes: Tch, and I really hadn't thought my beginning was that good! Hehe, no worries! Naraku's back, erm, sorta. Nothing too bad happening yet, 'cept for Naraku being his usual sadistic self, teh. Bad, bad Naraku. Hope you enjoyed. Thanx a bunches:D

**Wolfwoods:** Hehe, funny how I was updating my fic and then saw your review appear like on the same day. Heh, thanx! And I did! lol. :P

Mmm, okay, thanx so much to all my wonderful reviewers! Love ya guys!

Arigatou and Happy Holidays!

(: DarkRoseBlood

_(edit : 9.8.06 : some quick format editing and removal of irritating fangirl japanese)_


	5. Bleeding Reflection

Author Notes: Anou… see, aren't you guys so happy? I'm not dead… -runs away from angry mob of readers yelling about 'slow, baka authors'-

Anyways, here's the fifth chapter after such a long, long while. I know, I know, I'm very slow and I'm very sorry. But you guys love me anyways, ne? -gives puppy dog eyes- Right? -runs away again as angry mob of readers starts to chase her- Eheh... anyhow as usual, its kinda dark, twisted, weird, and whatever else my writing normally entails. So hope ya enjoy :) Review responses are at the bottom! Luv ya all!

**rating: R** Ye be warned. Don't like, don't read. Simple, really.

**disclaimer:** Yes! I own Inuyasha and I will torture everyone by putting all the characters together in ridiculous pairings just for my own sadistic amusement! Mwahahahahaha… -evil lawyers come and start to poke authoress to death, threatening to sue- Ow! Eh? I don't own it? What the hell? -lawyers poke authoress again- Eh! Ow! Fine, fine, I don't own Inuyasha… damn…

And without further ado…

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**Thy Soul of Sin  
**By: DarkRoseBlood

_Chapter Five  
Bleeding Reflection_

—

_And since you know you cannot see yourself,  
__so well as by reflection, I, your glass,  
will modestly discover to yourself,  
that of yourself which you yet know not of. _

_-William Shakespeare- _

Shadows encircled her.

Ominous darkness danced passionately upon the paper walls in an elegant ballet of shifting mendacity and realism. Gloomy blackness shrouded the truth in unknown corners where the ghosts and spirits of wicked lurked… patiently… waiting… waiting… until the precise moment to strike…

Shadows played with the fading light of midday that managed to leak through the concealed windows. Silent and bare, the room was, with cold tatami mats covering the floor; naught a whisper murmured throughout the vast room that seemed to hold an endless amount of space in its desolateness.

Melancholic loneliness the vacant black room symbolized as scornful shadows masked the horrors in the far depths of the barren chamber.

Loneliness… so lonely…

Faintly, a soft murmur of fine cloth rustled almost unheard through the dim, unlit chamber as delicate, pale white fingers—two to be specific: a middle and index—silently rose into the tired yet somehow fresh air and placed themselves upon the smooth, clear surface of luminous glass.

Clean and shined nails glistened faintly in the darkness as they trailed down the cool, reflective glass; only a virtually unheard, metallic sound resonated through the still air as the delicate nails, scrubbed until they were immaculate, lightly dragged across the fragile glass.

Emotionless, sapphire irises glittered darkly as they blankly examined the dirt free cuticles as if hypnotized by their shimmering cleanliness. Curious how barely two days ago they had been dirtied and chipped, scarcely recognizable to the perfectly manicured nails that gently rested on the stainless glass.

Warped deviously somewhere in her forgotten mind, she could not even acknowledge them as her own. Seemingly glowing in the empty darkness, which pitifully occupied the vast room, with pure limpidness, they were… unfamiliar… unknown…

If they hadn't been attached to her hand she was positive she wouldn't have recognized them as her own fingernails…

As if hypnotized, she stared at the pale white hand lying immobile against the stainless glass. Dark sapphire orbs flickered to the identical blue eyes reflected in the incandescent mirror.

Curious how she could not recognize the young onna reflected in the pristine mirror. Odd how… she could not recognize the raven-haired girl no older than sixteen or seventeen as herself.

As if some kind of supernatural being with a bitter, ethereal beauty, the fair yet not sickly pale features of a girl stared out from the mirror, no scars remaining as a reminder of the battle from which she had been rescued. Every single vile blemish had healed and faded rather quickly, which had surprised the healer Izumi, but the older woman had attributed it to the young onna's miko powers.

Every mocking, taunting scar and scratch, which had spitefully reminded her of dreary forlorn past, had healed and faded… except for one, that is…

Prominent against her unearthly pale, milky-white skin, the thin cut of light scarlet curved elegantly yet depravedly down her left cheek. Of course, that certain cut had not been from any wretched battle… no, not at all…

Abruptly and swiftly, the priestess let her right arm fall limply to her side with the mellifluous _whoosh_ of a white haori sleeve. Two pallid fingerprints were left smudged on the otherwise faultless glass.

Misty cerulean eyes leisurely traced the figure of a young onna reflected in the silver, floor-length mirror. So foreign to her was the haunting reflection…

It had been almost a week since she awoke to the dawn's brilliant light without her memory, and still she had not become accustomed to her own unfamiliar appearance, though she had seen it many times since then. Oh, it frustrated her to think that she could not even recognize herself, nevertheless anybody else.

Beneath the lucid light, which silent and dangerously leaked into the otherwise dark, empty room, a miko stared unblinkingly back at her from within the mocking mirror. Taunting, haunting the raven-haired onna, a priestess—something pure and untainted—gazed maliciously at her with lost, hallow sapphire eyes. Yet why… did she feel so tainted, so soiled, so… _corrupted_… why?

Drowning beneath the endless screams screeching painful melodies of agonizing misery and mystifying duties, she felt like she had no right to bear the title of miko—someone who would protect the innocent from all things immoral and dishonest.

And that was just satirical in itself since the one who had deemed her as a miko was Naraku… supposedly the embodiment of all that is wicked and evil.

However… if she really contemplated over it, the silent Shrine Maiden could find no evidence to support that statement. At least, not in all time she had spent with Naraku for the last week or so.

Vaguely, her mind, ensnared within turmoil, reflected that she indeed had only been with Lord Naraku for barely a week. To her, it had seemed as if she had been by his side beyond forever. All she knew was this wondrous abode, these snow-caped mountains, which encircled the frosty valley, the beautiful courtyards and garden littered throughout the castle. Nothing else was in the slightest bit familiar except for Naraku—his keen blood red eyes ever scrutinizing. Everything he did, she had observed, was done with acute precision yet with this elegant fluidity and swiftness of someone who knew he was superior to those around him.

Sometimes, she hated it. Hated him. Sometimes, she didn't. And she didn't know why.

Yes, the young priestess knew the scarlet-eyed hanyou was very devious and crafty, easily able to tear her life to bloody shreds in mere seconds, but still, even her miko senses warned her of nothing truly and utterly evil from him. Something whispered to her, a feeling, a sixth sense, if you will, murmured to her that he would _not_ tear her mortal to bloody mutilated shreds. Perhaps the young onna knew very few other things but she believed and _knew _this.

So… what did that mean?

Lost within her own little warped world, Kagome continued to stare at her reflection, completely dubious of its reality—yet she could feel it, smell it, taste it, see it…

Adorned in the obvious miko's garb Izumi had presented to her to wear—from Lord Naraku himself, according to the healer—Kagome couldn't help butponder that she looked like something pure, unadulterated… innocent…

And some part of her wished to be that youthful and chaste once more…

Flowing around her in corpus waves, her haori was like any traditional miko's attire except for the fact that one could tell it was made from the finest and most durable quality. It shined with this misleading undertone of luminosity and felt like waves of pure silk upon her skin—a simple yet radiant white with the exception of a light splash of sparkling silver Sakura blossoms that littered the bottom of each long haori sleeve, which draped far enough to hide her fingers from view. Flickering slightly with each subtle movement, the silvery-white Sakura blossoms were hardly noticeable unless hit directly by a source of light; each blossom seemed to be formed of dozens of minuscule diamonds that glittered with reigning luster.

Neither the dark midnight blue of dead night nor the pale, baby-blue of noontime on a cloudless day, her hakama pants were simply that not quite dark, ominous blue precisely before nightfall.

Although a feeling of being too contaminated for some reason—too unworthy to bear such an outfit that should be worn by one who deserved it, Kagome felt radiant, _content_… wearing the clothing of a priestess.

A feeling—a sense of belonging stirred in her and she delighted in that fact.

With a small smile gracing her pale pink lips, the miko lifted her hand and withdrew two pairs of chopsticks from her thin blue obi—one pair the same color as her hakama pants while the other pair sparkled with the silvery shade of the Sakura blossoms that streaked the ends of her flowing white haori sleeves. Shimmering with a sheen of lustrous silver, the second pair possessed a lethal edge that was sharpened like a deadly blade.

These two blade chopsticks were actually a gift from Izumi herself. According to Izumi, these silvery chopsticks had been an ancient gift in the healer's family for many generations, and Izumi wanted to impart them to Kagome. The young teen had been tremendously touched by the gift and, of course, thanked the healer over and over again when she realized that Izumi would not accept them back.

Pleasurably, the young miko observed the smooth blade edge that could easily be very deadly if used the correct way. Her small smile widened somewhat as she once again concealed the pair of dark blue chopsticks within her obi to keep for later use.

Placing one of the whitish-silver chopsticks delicately between her teeth, she used her hands and spare chopstick to twist long ebony-black hair in a messy bun near the top of her head. With a satisfied nod, the miko stuck the silver chopsticks into the many tousled winds and coils of her raven locks, securing the bun in its place except for a few loose tendrils that hung here and there.

With a soft breath, Kagome meticulously scrutinized the young priestess just beyond the slick, glossy glass of the polished mirror.

Silently and lithely, a subtle shimmer of movement stirred in farthest corner shrouded in darkness of the otherwise tranquil room. Reflected in the smooth, flawless mirror, the obscured silhouette of a mysterious figure looming inauspiciously behind her unhurriedly became more defined from the murky shadows, which continued to dance to an unknown melody across the white screen walls.

"I wondered when you would deem it necessary to join me," Kagome softly spoke to the silent room.

"Is that so?" replied a silky voice the drowned her senses beneath an icy ocean.

Why exactly did that voice viciously weave around her already unstable sanity like a venomous snake and cause her breath to catch in her throat?—she did not know, nor did she care to know, so the miko simply continued her scrutiny of the onna reflected in the glossy mirror.

…A face that was alien to her… eyes that held no recollection of their abnormal shade of blue…

"Yes… a little, anyways…" she murmured to the seemingly unoccupied room.

Idly yet somehow elegantly, a low chuckle echoed through the empty chamber—excluding the ornate silver mirror and two persons motionless in the darkness—cloaked in misleading shadows. Slithering through the ominous blackness, the soft rumble reached the miko's ears and, instead of filling her with a sensation of disquiet, it soothed her mind into a feeling of ease.

She had no desire to contemplate why that happened either.

Glittering wine-red eyes surveyed the priestess from the dancing shadows as she stared into the silver-wrought mirror as if enthralled by what she saw.

Scarlet eyes ever-so devious, the black-haired hanyou pondered as to what his miko was so transfixed with. He observed as the miko cocked her head, tendrils of midnight black hair swaying freely in the shadowy chamber.

_His _miko—so simple yet so… arbitrary… her moods ever-changing, swift and precise.

His miko—this blinding pure entity of white, innocent light…

His to tantalize.

His to damage.

His to break.

His to destroy.

_His to shatter…_

…this flawless, porcelain beauty—more unblemished than the gleaming mirror her gaze stayed rooted in.

This untainted miko was his and _no one _else's. Completely and exclusively _his _and he was _never_ going to release her.

She was his forever, and in time, not now though, but in time… she would learn that…

…his innocent and untouched china doll…

Dazzling sapphire irises met Naraku's smoldering scarlet eyes as his miko gazed at him in the mirror. Naraku smirked, eyes darkening as she looked at him with a relaxed and oh-so innocent expression.

_His to manipulate. _

Though she still did not trust him fully, the priestess—his priestess trusted him enough to let her guard down and allow countless, unspoken thoughts to play across her pale face in his presence.

Like the dancing shadows themselves, Naraku suddenly appeared directly behind her, no longer veiled in the darkness of the large, vacant chamber. Yet Kagome had seen no speeding blur of warping colors; she had simply been looking at him in the sleek, shiny mirror and then he was abruptly behind her… like lucid black liquid.

Ever moving… ever flowing… ever deceiving… having no solid form…

Instinctively, a small gasp of surprised leapt from Kagome's throat as she felt two warm fingers press against the back of her own nails. Widened sapphire eyes shot to stare at the middle and index fingers she had unconsciously placed back onto the exact spot as before on the smooth glass mirror… though now two more fingers, obviously larger then her own, were pressed on top of her nails.

Naraku's own middle and index fingers, except for the deadly sharp claws that made them look more like claws than fingers, really…

An amused smirk formed on the half-demon's lips as he watched his miko's bright sapphire gaze flicker back to the image presently reflected in the silver-framed mirror that stood on two clawed feet.

Quite an image they made—his miko and he… one of fresh, pure white and azure… the other a dark, sinister cerulean and black…

_His to shape._

As if she was meant to wear the blue and white garb, the miko's apparel fit her body effortlessly, accenting each soft curve and dip entrancingly.

"Have we been exploring, Kagome?" Naraku questioned, his amused smirk still present as he lifted his other hand, not pressed against the back of hers, and lazily twirled a silky lock of ebony hair between his claws.

"Yes…" Kagome replied, nodding slightly, not minding the sharp claws that languidly played with her hair. "After Izumi helped me bathe and provided me with these clothes… I… I just had to go… get _away_… just _go_… somewhere… away… Izumi-san was so cheerful and lively and I–I just had to get _away_…"

Continuing to twirl his miko's radiant ebony locks between his fatal claws, the ruby-eyed hanyou shifted his gaze from the ever-glimmering mirror to look down upon his cerulean-eyed miko; the only indication of his interest was the slight raise of an eyebrow.

And, oh, was he intrigued…

_His to rule._

"Why, my miko?" he murmured, his voice a deceiving caress of soft velvet.

Kagome gave a small snort at the possessive title he had placed on her but did not say anything of it. She would let Naraku play his little games for now.

"What do you see, Naraku-sama?" Kagome asked in reply, deciding that she would join Naraku in his twisted mind games. But, really, she felt no ire toward him at the moment, simply contemplation.

Naraku mentally laughed in satisfaction as he heard her title for him: Naraku_-sama_. Very alluring… But his attention was drawn somewhere else at the moment…

"Why do you ask, Kagome?" he said, each word measured and purposely encased in silk.

As she spoke, the young miko's delicate, pale fingers gradually slid down the immaculate glass, Naraku's two demon claws still on top of hers: "Because I see," she began, staring into the glimmering mirror, "…I see something vile, tarnished… something that has no place… unwanted, unneeded… _wretched_, _impure_… not _worthy_…" Each word was spit out with a disdainful bite: nasty, disgusting, putrid… burning…

Naraku let out a soft chuckle as his gleaming white fangs that protruded wickedly from his mouth hovered shamelessly above her pale neck. His hot, even breath sprayed across the white, unflawed shin of her neck with chilled pleasure. Deviously, the hanyou's smirk widened as he felt the involuntary shiver the coursed down his miko's spine, her elegant attire rustling faintly at the movement.

Perhaps, Kagome couldn't play the game as well as she thought.

_His to devour._

"Am I really that immoral?" the half-demon inquired two sharp points trailing down the porcelain skin of Kagome's neck, though not hard enough to draw sweet, ruby blood.

Sparkling sapphire eyes nearly closing in long-awaited pleasure, the priestess unwillingly trembled once again, but her voice remained undisturbed and void of any apprehension. Dimly, somewhere far in the back of her mind, she realized she was losing the game, but at the moment, she didn't care.

"No, not you," she nearly whispered, her gaze focused on the faultless mirror, "…_me_…"

At this, Naraku paused, somewhat thrown off track for a moment. Wine red eyes gazed sadistically at the mirror but faint query reflected in their glossy sheen. Yet the hanyou did not say anything as his miko continued, sharp claws tangled in her raven-black hair once again.

"I met…" she resumed, "Kagura the Wind Sorceress. She called me… Inuyasha's wench…"

"Is that so?" whispered a velvety voice near her ear.

"Yes… but, in truth, it did not really bother me after my initial anger," the miko responded, her voice distant. "I remember her name, vaguely, like in a faraway dream. And when I saw her, there was just an aura about her… she was so proud and full of poise… something that I am not…"

Naraku examined her reflection closely, musing as to who this miko was before him, for surely this was not the annoying little wench who had followed the golden-eyed hanyou everywhere like some kind of love-sick puppy.

This girl was something mysterious and new… something to be deciphered… a twisted web of unknowns… and Naraku had always prided himself in knowing _everything_, to be able to work out every puzzle and scheme, then to be able to distort and manipulate it into his own…

Oh yes…

And she was _his _miko—_all his_—yet the half-demon was still unraveling her…

Very slowly and—if one would dare speak the same word in the same sentence as the immoral hanyou—somewhat _gently_, Naraku took a hold of her pale right hand resting lightly on the sleek, cool mirror and brought it up to his face with an air of indifference. Lightly, the cool smoothness of her nails pressed against his lips.

As stormy sapphire irises met ruby blood eyes in the glossy mirror, Naraku nonchalantly bit down on her middle finger.

Always his…

_His to corrupt._

Slowly, as if it had all the time in the world, a dark burgundy bead of thick blood began to form beneath his fang, so plump and juicy as it lazily trickled down the curve of her finger, contrasting vividly with her white skin.

"Vile, tarnished… unwanted… impure…" whispered Naraku somewhat mockingly, "No, my miko, you are a white entity made from radiating purity. However…"

Unexpectedly, a sharp gasp shot quietly but intensely through the immobile air as she was pulled fully back into Naraku's chest; the hand not grasping her palm slid around her petite waist. Instinctively, the miko's spine stiffened immediately but then inadvertently calmed in the hanyou's light grip.

"You are encircled by shadows," he continued to whisper charismatically in her ear, "and eventually the darkness will devour you."

Kagome blinked and stared into the silver-framed mirror, the beginnings of a smile twisting her lips, now completely relaxing into Naraku's comfortable hold. She distantly wondered what Naraku was doing, but her mind was adrift in the rapturous serenity of blissful white clouds.

"The problem is I like darkness…" murmured Kagome, only partially answering Naraku. "Most people associate dankness with evil… with the wicked and depraved… but I love the darkness as I shun the light; so beautiful and mysterious, I see it as something not to be taken casually but to be awed, at least now I do… I don't know about before yet nor do I care…"

She paused as if reflecting upon her words, her brow furrowed in confusion for a moment.

Naraku traced abstracted circles with his clawed thumb in her palm. Her porcelain skin was smooth and silk-like, faint creases dipped shallowly beneath his nail. He distantly recalled a sorceress he had met once that claimed she could tell his future by looking at his palm—of course, that was before he killed her. Lazily, the half-breed mused as to whether his miko's future—_Kagome's _future had been born anew when she awoke unable to recall her past.

The fates, the almighty God, Kami—whatever, one wished to name them—Naraku wondered if they had wiped the miko's memories for a reason. …Well, if they expected some kind of act of kindness toward the miko, some kind of deed that proved there was still something human left in the hanyou, something remotely virtuous from him, _Naraku_—

Then more fool on them.

He was Naraku, after all.

"Who are you, Naraku-sama?" Kagome spoke, unaware of the ponderings she had interrupted. "Who are you, half-demon Naraku? Who are you…?"

Naraku idly retracted his arm from around her waist and twisted his claws into her awry raven tresses once more, yet his other claw still kept its hold on her palm.

"The darkness…" He said simply, his black velvet voice betraying nothing.

"Yes, but which one…?" Kagome mused more to herself than to the hanyou, her brow furrowed slightly. "And then… who am I?"

With a single swift, fluid jerk, Naraku easily pulled out one of the silvery-white chopsticks holding her hair in place. Wavy, midnight black locks tumbled down onto Kagome's shoulders as half of her flowing hair was set free from the messy bun. Malicious scarlet eyes lazily studied the gleaming, razor-sharp blade edge of the silver chopstick, twirling it slowly in his claw.

His lips curved into a forbidding smirk as he leisurely turned the palm stained with a small rivulet of garnet blood to face him.

Finally, curiosity winning over, Kagome turned her head to look at the hanyou, wondering what he was doing.

Suddenly, a sharp sting seared from her hand as Naraku created a bleeding slice in center of her palm with the grazing edge of her silver chopstick as it glittered in the darkness. Bitingly and painfully, a warm dribble of garnet languidly trickled down her palm and wrist.

"Mine to scar…" he whispered into her ear, unsettling scarlet eyes glinting like blood rubies.

Several more slashes of burning pain erupted in Kagome's palm as Naraku etched several more lines into her palm with the razor edge of the bloody chopstick.

His eyes were ablaze with something unfamiliar as he carved the kanji character into her palm.

She was _his_. And everybody would know that.

His to scar.

His to mark.

His to claim.

_His to taint._

With a soft laugh, Naraku slowly carved the last line into the pale, white skin of her palm, which was now sliced mercilessly; sparkling garnet blood trickled in several small streams down her arm, some of the slender rivulets already staining her white haori sleeve.

Sweet, sweet red tarnishing unearthly white and the delicious metallic scent of fresh blood wafting through the black void, the half-demon turned to look at his victim. Her midnight blue eyes were shut tightly, and she bit furiously on her bottom lip in an attempt to not cry out.

…a marvel his china doll could bleed red…

Ever-so gradually Kagome reopened her bright sapphire eyes and peered into the image presently reflected in the glossy mirror. Naraku stood motionless behind her, that utter superiority and power of his radiating off him in tumultuous black waves, his evasive smirk not revealing anything. Stained wicked red, the glittering chopstick was held indolently in the claw that also delicately clutched her still raised palm, which was streaked with dark burgundy blood to match the hanyou's elusive red eyes.

Kagome continued to stare, as if spellbound, into the mirror.

"Bastard," she murmured softly, her voice calm except for the slightest bit of confusion tingeing it. Confusion for what exactly?—she didn't know. There were many reasons that had caused her to be confused these last few days: her past, her future, her life, this place, this world, Naraku… But, at present, she didn't know which confusion was more prominent. "Someday, when this is all over, I will kill you Naraku."

A smirk, evil, wicked, and alluring. "Will you, Kagome?"

She didn't answer—she had no answer to give.

The only sound that echoed through the vacant chamber veiled in deceiving shadows was the muted _drip-drop_ of wine-red blood as it hit the tatami mats. Well, that is, aside from the velvet-like whisper that cut though the cool air, washing over her senses and drowning her in an abyss…

"You are mine to bleed…"

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End Notes: So what'd ya think? If you'd be so kind and tell me in a review, I'll give you… uhhh, a virtual cookie… with virtual chocolate chips, hehe. Anyways, hopefully I kept them pretty IC and not drifting off into lala land but eh… whatever…

Annoucement: Oooh, now doesn't that sound important? ;) Anyways, I was wondering if somebody who likes my story and my writing would like to be a beta-reader for this fic, and maybe some of my other stuff. If you'd like to, and think you can handle my slow updates and erratic writing patterns, then plz e-mail me or leave a review. I'd really appreciate it. Thanx!

Okay, now onto other things, hmm?

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**Reviews:**

**Jasmine Fields:** Hehe, yeah, that last chap probably was a little hazy and kinda made ppl feel like that. But I hope this chap was less confusing since I kinda mixed both writing styles, or at least, I tried to. Anyways, anything you don't get or its too 'floaty', just ask or tell me, and I'll either explain or see if I can change it. :) Thanx for the honest review! I really appreciate it!

**Reality:** Umm, I'm not exactly sure when Kagome is going to remember everything, but hopefully, it'll be soon. Or not, with my erratic writing styles. Hehe. Anyways, thanx for reviewing!

**Alexis Barnes:** Thanx for the review!

**Naraku's Dark Soul:** Have I mentioned that I love your penname? Hehe, anyways thanx for being understanding in my lazy updating. Though with how long I took now, you might reconsider the not cursing me if I take a while part, ne? lol. Hopefully, I still kept them pretty IC, but eh… whatever… Thanx a bunches for the lovely review! ;P

**Skitzoflame:** Yeah, I know I keep bringing up questions with no answers. Gomen. XD Thanx for reviewing!

**Wolfwoods:** Your welcome and thank you for reviewing! XD

**TamashaToko:** Oooh, of course! Who wouldn't like Naraku all evil and bad! A deliciously evil Naraku is good for the soul. lol. Thanx for the review! ;D

**WildKat25/ShadowWolf13:** Oh, maybe Kagome is just a tad bitter in this fic. lol. But who wouldn't be if ya woke up without a memory and evil, but still a very yummy Naraku by your side, ne? Hehe. Hope your still pleased with how the fic is going! Thanx for reviewing! ;P

**Child of the Ashes:** Long time no see, ne? And yay! you finally got an account! Love the name, by the way. Ah, and don't worry I don't plan to be dropping this story any time soon, though I may take (well, actually I -do- take) awhile updating. But like you said, good things take time! lol. Lots and lots of time, in my case, actually. Thanx for the review! I wasn't sure about my new writing style and you made feel very pleased with it. Heh, this chap I tried to mix my old one and new one a bit, but eh… somehow I came up with this as a result, heh. Ah whatever, my writing styles change and mesh constantly. Hehe. Thanx! ;D

**Inverness:** Well… I updated, not so sure about the 'soon' part though, heh. Thanx for reviewing! ;)

**shell:** (blushes) Best fic? Mine? Naw… it's probably just second best, hehe. lol. :) Well, I tried to update regularly but it didn't quite work out, heh. And ya'll just have to see about the rest of the inu gang later. Thanx! ;P

**littlemiko:** Aw, shucks… you're too kind. Hehe, thanx for reviewing! (:

**KattSano:** Well, yes, for some reason, I have a bad habit of making people suffer in my fics, heh. Oh well, maybe things will get better soon… or not. Hehe. Thanks for reviewing! Really appreciate it! (:

**SesshomaruGirl14:** Okie-dokie. :poof: I updated! Like magic, ne? lol. Thanx for reviewing (:

Wowies, that was a lot! Thanx so much to all my reviewers! You're what keeps me going! Luv ya all!

Thank you and until next time… (and who knows when that will be, knowing my updating habits o.O;;)

Ja ne!

:) DarkRoseBlood

_(edit : 9.8.06 : some quick format editing and removal of irritating fangirl japanese)_


	6. Obsession of the Wicked

A/N's: (sighs) Scelerus Animus here, formerly know as _DarkRoseBlood, _and yes, yes it's been such a long time I know… unfortunately, life sucks, but we simply have to deal with the cards that we are dealt, ne?—and I've been dealing with a lot of unwanted cards as of late… but life goes on, and then I finally update! _and _with a chapter over 5000 words long (which I entirely did not intend, but it came out that long anyway, heh)! yay! jump for joy! (eyes readers with scowls and numerous pointy and/or heavy objects ready to be thrown) damn… perhaps, the rotten vegetables were better than this… (ducks as various rotten vegetables are thrown at her) or not… teehee… ;)

Mmm, let's see, what do I have for you this chapter… I'm trying to speed it up a bit, yet still keep a steady pace to the story, without rushing and ruining the plot, which I absolutely abhor to do… so please tell me how I'm doing… And I think I toned down the excess detail a bit, at least, I tried to… so we'll also see how that comes out… and finally we're getting deeper into the plot, the twisted-ness, the allurement, the darkness…

To all my, reviews, thanks so much! Responses are at bottom, per usual. Luv ya all! And special thanks to **ZippyRox** for beta-ing this chap for me! Much love to her!

trans.:  
_ne_ – depending on context, either 'hey' or sort of asking for confirmation, like 'really?' or 'isn't that so?'

**warnings: **rated **M** for a reason, twisted-ness, dangerous introspective into Naraku's wicked mind, general evil-ness, darkness, and the like, as usual… a devious Naraku…

**disclaimer:** yes, of course! I own Inuyasha and simply write _English_ fanfiction just for the hell of it… yeah right, pft… don't own anything…

And without further adieu…

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**Thy Soul of Sin  
**by scelerus animus

_Chapter Six  
Obsession of the Wicked_

In a blazing streak of electric blue light, the sacred arrow struck the splash of red paint with a ferocious shock, instantly burning half the bark off the splintered tree. Embedded into the burning tree trunk, it cast a faint pool of glittering blue light onto the bare ground, slightly muddy from the night's random showers.

The sun had yet to rise; only a few stray rays of pinkish-gold sunlight filtered through the remaining clouds, causing the arrow to radiate with exceptional brightness this particular morning. Still sizzling a faded blue, the arrow seemed to express its mistress's ire perfectly at the moment.

Approximately twenty meters away from the entrenched arrow stood the priestess Kagome. Her blue and white miko attire rippled gently as a chilly breeze passed over her, but she did not shiver from the morning cold.

Still in the same position as when she had shot the arrow, Kagome's grip on the wooden handle tightened, her nails digging harshly into the dark wood. She stared across the barren field at the large tree, which was scorched by the aura from her arrow. Narrowed, sapphire eyes glittered darkly as her brow furrowed in unleashed fury.

Another gust of wind swept over her rigid form, and she began to relax under the nippy, yet pleasant, air. Stray pieces of raven hair blew into her face and obscured her vision for a moment as she stared at the burning-blue tree, eyes hard and deathly cold. This look was usually not found in the miko's sapphire gaze—at least, not before her memories had been lost. But as of recently, this particular look, callous and bitter, had dominated the miko's wintry features more than often.

She was cold, frosty, artic, brutal as the wind, and as lost as a Sakura blossom in a snowstorm. At least, that was what she felt like.

With the beginnings of a sneer that was unnatural on her lovely face, she deftly pulled another arrow from the bag on her back, and muttered at the same time, "Disgusting…"

Clearly, with natural ease that she had earlier found herself capable of, she nocked the deadly arrow. "Putrid…"

Raven bangs blown into her line of vision once more, she aimed the arrow straight at the tree. "Wretched…"

Then she set it free. "_Hanyou_."

Soaring across the field in a streak of violet-blue light, it hit the intended target, once again alighting the tree in a blaze of vivid indigo. Staring at the sizzling tree with a pitiless expression, her voice full of loathing, she hissed, "I _will_ destroy you, _break_ you as you broke me."

"Surely you are not talking about me, miko?" said a voice from behind her, velvet-like and tinged with amusement. Naraku.

With swift, graceful movements, she drew another arrow and nocked it. "Unfortunately, no. Not this time, Naraku-_sama_." Her voice was hostile and heartless, bitter as the heavy blizzards that plagued the mountain valleys in the middle of winter. Naraku took great pleasure in the utter enmity that spilled from her lovely mouth.

In another large blast of vivid indigo light, shining as bright as a summer day's sky, a sacred arrow flew across the field and nearly incinerated the tree on impact. Which was a pity, since she still had a carrier full of arrows left and plenty of rage to wrathfully vent.

"Then what bothers this miko, hmm? What makes this miko tremble in anger? What causes uneasiness and resentment, to vehemently coil in her steadily freezing heart, patiently waiting to spring and strike like a treacherous snake?" inquired Naraku, his soft words wrapping around her senses, consuming them, luring her deeper within in his trap, despite the fact that he was still several feet behind her.

Before her, the entire tree was nearly flaming with her purification powers, pulsating a fiery blue. Drawing another arrow, she aimed, eyes furrowed in deathly concentration, immense ire rolling off her in great waves. "Nani, Naraku? Bothered that you aren't my main focus of anger at the moment?"

She released the arrow. Across the field—where no green vegetation remained, only a deep gorge from when the scared arrow's purification powers had unearthed the land—the tree blazed again in an explosion of vivacious light.

Unperturbed by the blast, Naraku quietly laughed, a treacherous chuckle saturated in devious deceit. "Indeed," he intoned, not without sarcasm, his reddish-brown eyes absently examining his miko in faint expectancy.

Every time he had come across the raven-haired miko since she had awoken nearly two weeks prior, something had sparked within her, coming alive through anger, occasionally enjoyment, or some other human sentiment that stirred her blood. And, curiously_…his. _These meetings had become a sort of routine for him, one that brought unexpected pleasure. At any rate, he derived great amusement from the miko's engaging antics, whether done in seething fury or other.

And this—_this_ was completely intolerable. Precarious even. Routine was what made mortals—_humans_—weak. Easy to kill. Feeble. Pathetic.

So _he_, Naraku, knew that this repulsive habit needed to be terminated immediately. Yet still, he continued this sickly act—this _routine_—despite the fact that he knew its untimely end.

Which, of course, led to another disgraceful conclusion.

_Obsession._ Another vile, detestable practice that mortals made a part of their daily routine. Another weakness of mortals that eventually led them to their agonizing destruction. And this miko had somehow wormed into his twisted, sardonic mind so frequently that it was bordering on this foul-tasting _thing_ wretched mortals called _obsession._

Naraku despised it.

Now, one of the many things that made Naraku superior to these sickening ningens that infested the land like rats was that the hanyou recognized and understood his weaknesses, _all_ his weaknesses, which invariably branded him far above these wretched mortals. However, this near-obsession with the raven-haired, sapphire-eyed miko, Kagome, was still… extremely hazardous, able to warp, twist, and destroy all his carefully-laid plans.

_Obsession._ Yet in spite of his encounters with this abhorrent human weakness, he still did not completely understand this loathsome thing deemed obsession. And it infuriated him to feel it crawling under his skin and into his bones, but not able to understand it. It was the downfall of many, many mortals and he could understand that, yet not loathsome _obsession_ itself.

Certainly he had experienced obsession, with his fierce desire to kill Inuyasha and gain power. And certainly he had experienced this _human _weakness before (he had despised it then as well) with the protector of the Shikon no Tama a little over fifty years ago—the miko Kikyo. But he could not grasp this sickening, wholly useless need.

Yes, he remembered her well, the priestess Kikyo, and his obsession with her—or, more specifically, the bandit Onigumo's obsession. And how it had led to the bandit's destruction. Yet, even now, when all that remained of her was an undead corpse, he, Naraku, still wished to harm her, destroy her, break her—yet, as of recent, the priestess Kikyo had been far, far from his mind, replaced by someone else.

_Kagome. _

"However," Naraku idly reflected aloud, hardly loud enough for Kagome to hear, "Kagome is not Kikyo."

"_What?_" Kagome snapped as she finally tore her attention away from what was left of the devastated tree (at which she had shot three more arrows). She looked over her shoulder, which was currently aiming her next arrow, to gaze at the hanyou, sapphire orbs continually intense and harsh. "What did you say, _half-demon_?"

Faintly startled out of his thoughts—of course, his face remained as impassive as ever—Naraku looked at Kagome, the corner of his lips slowly curving into a malicious smirk, one that anybody else would have immediately cowered before.

"_Anger_, another emotion that you mortals feel. It eats at your hearts, slowly devouring you from the inside till your inevitable end," Naraku drawled, ignoring her question. "Unless, of course, your heart is turned to ice and stone by your foolish hatred, locked deep inside until you cannot reach it any longer, forgetting, in time, that you had it in the first place. But, I suppose, to sentimental mortals, that is either just as appalling, or possibly much worse."

Kagome's glare just seemed to intensify. He was ignoring her question _and_ implying something else, the little snake.

"My heart is not frozen, hanyou." she hissed. "Unlike yours, which is as black as the night."

"Perhaps," he said simply. "But that doesn't answer whether you believe it is worse to forget everything you are and become the monsters you mortals despise with such wasted passion, or be destroyed into oblivion—Heaven or Hell or whatever mortals believe."

Kagome continued to glare at Naraku over her shoulder and opened her mouth as if to speak, but closed it immediately after. "I…" she began once again, something unsure flashing in her eyes, "I believe… I-I believe… _believe_…" Her voicedied then.

A gust of wind blew the dust up around her feet, and raven hair whirled wildly around her head, obscuring her vision for a moment. Bringing omens of death and ice and misery, a chill passed down her spine, crawling into her marrow until she felt that her entire being would either implode or completely shatter.

_She was not that of which she hated… she wasn't…wasn't…!_

She wanted to _scream_, she wanted to _yell_, to _kill_ the half-breed demon that taunted her with his not-quite-human yet not-quite-fully-demon eyes, but most of all—she wanted to curl up into a ball and cry.

For what? For whom? She did not know. Forever was trapped in this haze her memories were, unable to reach her and she unable to reach them. Her beliefs, her faiths, her own wretched _identity _had been mercilessly ripped from her mind, and now she knew nothing, was nothing. A shell. She felt like an empty shell.

_A beautiful china doll,_ whispered a small voice at the back of her mind that sounded oddly like Naraku's, _with glassy, lovely, soulless eyes and a fragile porcelain body so utterly hollow inside…while on your delicate porcelain palm, ownership has been carved and claimed…_

That smirk still present on his dangerously attractive features, Naraku patiently waited a few yards from her.

"I don't know what I believe…" she murmured at last, desolateness reflecting on her pale face.

Naraku chuckled, low and so like velvet. Kagome's glare returned. Bastard. Malicious, conniving half-breed bastard.

"Stop shoving words in my mouth and thoughts in my head, half-breed," Kagome demanded. "You know nothing about me."

…_she was neither that which she hated, nor a china doll so easily broken… she wasn't…_

Once again, Naraku chuckled and Kagome could almost feel that velvet slinking around her body, enwrapping her mind in an intoxicating case of deceit.

"Don't I? I know more about you than you know about yourself, miko." Cruel. Cold. Utterly Naraku.

For a moment, Kagome faltered. He was _right_… Naraku was the one who spitefully held her past in his tainted claws. She knew nothing about herself… simply that she had been a miko and Naraku, possibly, had been her enemy. And… _Inuyasha… Kikyo…_

Damn Naraku, he was still tossing her off track with his twisted words. _Kikyo… Kikyo…_

She could have sworn that Naraku had just said the name 'Kikyo' a minute ago, before he adverted her attention. And that name stirred something in her, whether pleasant or unpleasant she had yet to decide. Briefly, part of her felt a sense of sadness and pitying toward that name, before it was dominated by a stronger impression of extreme aversion toward it.

Sapphire eyes seemed to harden to icy stone as she glared more viciously at Naraku, brow furrowed even more in hate, though she wasn't really looking at him by any means, more through him.

_Kikyo… Kikyo… Inuyasha… Inuyasha…_

_Kikyo… Inuyasha… Inuyasha and Kikyo… _

That name whispered in her head, telling her to remember, ordering her to remember who she was. And it hurt; it angered her; it screamed at her. Like at night, when her mind was adrift in unknown territory and anything could happen. Like at night, it screamed at her.

But she couldn't remember.

Eyes alight with fire, glittering like true gems beneath the few striking rays of light that leaked into the sky, Kagome abruptly spun back around to face the still sizzling tree nearly stretching her neck muscles in the process. With a low rumble in her throat, almost snarl-like in tone, she aimed the arrow, glowing with power, and set it free. Leaving a burst of feverous pink sparks in its wake, the sacred arrow soared across the field, tearing up the ground in a wave of dazzling light, and struck whatever was left of the tree, instantly incinerating its thick trunk until all that remained was a blazing stump.

Her breath in ragged gasps and eyes narrowed, Kagome stared at the smoldering stump of dead bark in the same stance as when she had shot the arrow. A breeze, cool and calming against her flushed skin, blew over the field—currently ablaze with the remains of blue-pink light—causing her hakama and haori to ripple gently, but Kagome took no notice.

Perhaps her heart really _was_ transforming into ice and stone

_Anger. It surrounded her, implanting itself deep within the core of her heart, until it became the core itself. A hollow, empty core._

"You have improved."

"…Yes. I've been practicing with Izumi-san. She remembers a few things from when the last priestess guarded the village. She says that I am a natural with a bow…" Cold. Indifferent. Callous.

"Of course you are, miko." Sneering.

Her right palm, still raised from when she had shot the arrow, tingled slightly, the character viciously carved into the lily-white flesh glowing a faint red. Scarlet. The sensation _almost _burned but didn't. It scorched.

"…_Right_. I forgot the great Naraku-sama settles for nothing less than the best, the finest, the greatest—most powerful."

"_Never_. With _all_ my possessions, Kagome."

Raven hair gleamed like piercing obsidian, lashing fiercely into the air as Kagome whipped around to face Naraku, another arrow already drawn and aimed precisely at the wicked, smirking hanyou.

"I am _not_ a possession, Naraku," she declared, her voice bordering on the edge of a growl. Her arrow and bow trembled in shaking hands.

Naraku merely continued to smirk.

Not yet, but soon she would be. Her heart would soon be locked away in the repercussions of her hatred—ice and stone. And he would have it. Own it as he would her and her power.

Kagome's eyes flashed dangerously, sparks of dour blue.

"I had a dream," she stated, but her voice was chilling and disturbing.

"A dream, miko? And what was in that dream?" Naraku was curious. A week ago, she wouldn't have told him anything about her dreams or otherwise.

"…A hanyou… with golden eyes. And a girl, very beautiful, but… she wasn't alive. The hanyou had white hair and fluffy ears that another girl, who would never be quite as beautiful as the first, loved to always touch and play with. They were soft… so soft…" Her voice cracked but she quickly recovered, hardness filling its timbre once again. "And then there was two other people, a… taijiya and a houshi, along with a baby kit and cat youkai. All of us, w-we were friends who cared for one another. In my dream, we all were in a river laughing and playing."

"Quaint." Mockery.

"Yes… yes it was." Bitterness.

A pause. The wind blew. It was chilly. Once again, she wanted to shiver, but didn't, her grip becoming more firm on the bow.

"…Suddenly a dark cloud rose up from the South, a miasma that chocked us, strangled us with its poisonous gas. We all fought against it. I shot at it with my arrows, yet it did nothing to help us." Pure ice seemed to spill from her mouth, washing over the field, slowly freezing over the land. Her voice resembled stone. Hard. Unyielding. "It kept circling us, killing us. And all I could hear was this laugh, mocking and cruel. And see darkness and eyes—eyes the color of blood. Sinful eyes. I was scared. Scared for my friends."

Unconsciously, her grip tightened on her bow, breath harsh.

"However, before I could get to them, there was a brilliant flash of pink light and I fell, darkness around me. As I woke up, all I saw was red. Blood. The hideous red of blood. My friends lay sprawled across the ground, motionless and blood covering them. Dead. They were _dead_." Kagome shook and trembled, her skin clammy and palms slippery,thoughthe handthat pulled the string back still tingled with a faint hue of scorching scarlet.

"But… but for some reason, I knew the wicked laugh and sinful red eyes had not killed them." She threw Naraku a look that clearly said he was indeed lucky the scarlet eyes had not been the ones to murder her friends.

"Something else had. The golden-eyed hanyou was gone. I stood alone surrounded by my murdered friends, utterly frightened. Every whisper of wind, snap of a twig, scared me and I trembled. It _scared _me." Kagome's voice barely rose above a whisper, but still managed to exude bitter loathing seamlessly.

"…There was a noise in the nearby trees. Something dangerous, inhuman. A growl, a snarl. I ran. But, suddenly, the creature jumped at me from its hiding place. It had gorgeous white hair, almost the color of silver, but instead of beautiful, caring golden eyes, the creature's eyes were crimson. I screamed and then darkness surrounded me once again…"

"So, miko, what do you believe this dream means?"

Kagome scoffed. "I thought that you might be able to tell me that."

Naraku conveyed fallacious innocence. "Why would you think that, Kagome?"

Sick of all his despicable mind games and half-truths, Kagome, her voice several octaves higher than it had been a second ago, demanded, "Stop it with your riddles and diversions, Naraku! Answer and tell me the truth, for once!"

Naraku laughed this time, stabbing and derisive. "And why should I, miko?"

"Damn you!" Kagome yelled, infuriated. Glaring with glacial fire raging in her sapphire eyes, Kagome took a threatening step forward, raising her bow all the way to aim it straight at the hanyou's black heart, as it had become lax in her hands during the retelling of her dream. "Tell me, Naraku, _tell me_, why shouldn't I purify you where you stand! Why shouldn't I _kill _you!"

Unperturbed, Naraku took a step forward, his smirk unreservedly merciless and cunning, as were his thoughts. "Kill me, miko. Release your arrow and strike me. _Kill me_."

Trembling with a fierce snarl-like sound low in her throat, Kagome straightened, her shoulders rigid, and pulled the string so far back that it was in danger of snapping. " I should," she hissed, "I _should_… but… but…"

Scarlet eyes glittered in amusement as if they had just received the answer they expected. In a graceful blur, Naraku was abruptly in front of Kagome, barely an inch between them. One claw grasped her right wrist while the other held her chin lightly. In her delicate fingers, the arrow dangled loosely while her other arm hung limply at her side, a pale hand barely gripping her wooden bow.

Her voice caught in her throat then and she was unable to utter another word. Nevertheless, she maintained her glare, staring directly into Naraku's scarlet irises as the hanyou leaned closer and closer to her, breath upon her face. It reeked of demon, yet even so, veiled by his youki, smelled the faint scent of human, diluted almost beyond recognition. Vaguely, Kagome wondered if she were to close the space between them, would she feel a heartbeat? But, really, that thought was far from her mind at the moment.

Soft lips—cold as winter itself—trailed lightly across her cheek and to her ear, where his velvety voice murmured, "You won't."

_You won't kill me._

Kagome breathed, slightly ragged. She sensed goosebumps emerge on her arms, as she suddenly felt cold.

Then, without warning, Naraku jerked her chin and pressed his lips to hers. Kissed her. _Kissed _her.

All previous thoughts were instantaneously wiped from her mind, leaving it completely blank, as if she were in a state of utter bewilderment—which she was, of course.

_Deathly cold._

The arrow fell from her grasp; a loud thud resounded through the air as it hit the dirt.

Her usual stance, upright and stiff, seemed to crumble beneath the warmth—no, no frigid iciness of the kiss, and she trembled. Hands shaking and body weak, Kagome legs were about to give out beneath her. Pressed to his body, almost fully relying on him to support her, she vaguely noted that she could not feel a heartbeat. Her conscious mind, not enraptured by Naraku's lips pressed to hers, wondered what that could mean.

Before the rest of resistance fell beneath Naraku's unyielding kiss, she jerked her lips from his. Breath short and almost gasping, she stared at him eyes wide, all of that previous mask created from bitterness and fury gone. Sapphire irises were glossed over with shock, blank but still unrevealing.

Like a _doll's_. Except for… except for the barest spark of fear.

Seemingly with idleness yet purposely seductive, Naraku ran his tongue over his lips and fangs, which, to her further shock, Kagome noted that a faint tint of red stained the white canines. Blood.

Leaning towards her until his warm breath caressed her ear, Naraku murmured. "Do you still not fear me, Kagome?"

Unable to respond, she felt a sharp sting as a fang nipped her earlobe. As she unwillingly—or possibly willingly?—inhaled the addictive scent that was Naraku, she responded quietly, "I don't fear _you_. And… and I never will, Naraku, understand me, I never will. _Never._"

"Then what do you fear?" he questioned, though it was spoken softly almost teasingly as if he already knew the answer. Which he probably did, being Naraku.

"I fear…" She trembled. "I fear… I fear the unknown." Naraku smirked into her neck.

"But you do not fear me? Am I not the unknown? The key that knows who you were?"

"I… I…"

"Or do you fear that kiss? Do you fear the meanings behind it?"

"No… no, it's not that…"

"Isn't it? You do not fear me, but you are wary. You fear my intentions, my games, _ne_, Kagome?"

"Half-breed!" A hiss and the anger was back. "You do not know what you are talking—"

"Don't I? You fear what you cannot control, my delicious miko. You fear being helpless, _worthless_." A fang lightly dragged across her neck, leaving a faint red mark. He chuckled into her luscious raven hair. It was a taunt and she knew it. But… it was also…

"No! I… I…"

"Yes," he growled, low but not threateningly. Lips moving back towards her mouth, he licked the blood the trickled down her chin from when he had bitten her lip earlier during the kiss, though she hadn't noticed.

Once again, she faltered, anger lost to the morning sun.

There was a silence, long and quiet, while the sun began to rise in the east behind the tree that sizzled violet-blue with the remains of a purification aura.

"Yes… perhaps… yes, I fear what I can't control," she murmured. And then abruptly, she forcefully jerked out of his grip taking several steps away from him.

"But I will _not _be the puppet you use to control everything, Naraku… _sama_."

Eyes flashing dangerously once more and bow gripped tightly in her left hand (arrow forgotten), she swiftly turned around, leaving Naraku behind her as she headed toward the rest of the Village Shrine past the remainder of the sizzling tree.

Unperturbed, a devious smirk formed on Naraku's pale lips, which were still stained with Kagome's blood. With an appreciative flicker of his scarlet eyes, the hanyou observed how the rising sun seemed to outline Kagome in a blaze of brilliant fire. Vivacious flames of pink and yellow seemed to engulf his miko. Though, with her tensely straight form and confident posture, she tried to fight against their fiery rays with each step.

Lazily, he licked the smeared blood from one of the nails on his left hand. Scarlet eyes sadistically watching the steady drip of the blood from his miko's clenched right hand, Naraku noted that the sun's efforts, as well as Kagome's, were all in vain. Her control over her own fate was already lost to her. She was already a puppet—no, a delicate china doll. One that held a fire to rival the sun's behind her glass-like eyes, akin to sapphires.

For she was _his_ china doll.

For she belonged to _him_.

_Perhaps,_ Naraku mused idly,_ obsession was indeed a dangerous practice._

**.  
. ... .  
.**

In the distance, Kagura could see a thick column of smoke rising into the evening sky, which bled a scornful crimson as the sun sank behind the distant horizon. Flying toward its coils of dark ash, the Wind Sorceress smirked. With the wind at her every command, she landed on a lush grassy hill in a swirl of pink and purple. Ruby eyes flickered over the hut that lay before her and the scent of the humans for whom she had been searching assaulted her nose.

Blood, death, and grief hung heavy in the air. But it was a scent she expected from these sentimental mortals. The tip of her fan rested lightly against her chin and her nose scrunched up in disgust. She was here for a reason, nevertheless, so she would have to deal with it for the moment.

As the wind started to swirl stronger than normal, the low rumple of a doorway cloth indicated someone exiting the hut. Kagura eyed the aged, wrinkled miko with one patch covering an eye and a bow held in her frail hands as she stepped out of the hut at a slow pace.

"Aye, you there demon," she said with a suspicious look at Kagura, "what ye be doing here?"

Giving the miko a cruel, narrow-eyed look, Kagura replied, "You, old woman, are not to be questioning me, for I could kill you in a second if I desired so."

The subtle snap of the demoness's fan and a sudden gust of wind seemed to validate her claim.

"Whom ye be calling an old woman?" demanded the aged miko with anger, shielding her eyes at the abrupt change in the air's current but Kagura paid it no mind.

Sneering slightly, she said, "I am looking for the houshi and the taijiya."

And just on time, the aforementioned houshi stepped out of the hut behind the aged miko.

"Kagura!" he said, resentment pouring in his voice. "What is your business here? Naraku is dead."

With a faint snort, Kagura observed the state of the monk. He appeared weary and several bandages were wrapped around his bare torso and arms. Absently she noted that the Kazaana was still gone from his right palm, which meant that Naraku was still leading his facade that he really was dead. Amusing. She had just come at the right time.

Kagura noted that the taijiya was also still severely injured, or perhaps still trapped in the pain and depression of losing nearly everyone she loved in the supposed final battle and, as a result, was still incapacitated in the hut. How weak mortals were.

That wretched half-breed mutt, Inuyasha, was nowhere in sight, nor could she detect his scent anywhere.

"Oh really, monk?" she taunted, ruby eyes glittering deviously. "I have information that might interest you."

The houshi glared at the Wind Sorceress skeptically and said, "What information? And why would you decide to give it to _us_?"

"I've noticed that your other miko, besides that old woman"—Kagura sent a disdainful look to aged miko—"is not here and neither is that hanyou, _Inuyasha_."

With sudden abruptness, the air surrounding the monk seemed to have dropped several degrees. He resisted the urge to shift in unease, senses scanning the surrounding shrine, but he could not detect anything. Once again, he repressed the need to shiver as the name floated tauntingly in his mind.

_Inuyasha._

"Get to the point, Kagura," demanded the houshi.

Idly tapping her fan against her chin, Kagura continued leisurely, "Naraku has acquired a new… _plaything_."

"That's impossible! Naraku's dead!"

"Is that so, houshi?" the Wind Sorceress questioned with the raise of an eyebrow. "I have a trade for you. Tell me where that half-breed, Inuyasha, is, and I will tell you where Naraku is."

"How do I know you are not lying, Kagura?" Asked the monk, wariness still residing in his dark eyes. The Wind Sorceress, despite her supposed hate for the hanyou, was still an incarnation of Naraku, made from his rotted flesh and bones. He had no reason to trust her. "And, if it is true, how were you able to come here and tell us without Naraku knowing?"

A deep sneer crossed Kagura's face. "Naraku is having too much _fun_ with his new plaything at the moment," she spat out viciously.

"Plaything?" The monk questioned, puzzled. "Another incarnation?"

"Hardly," Kagura scoffed. "Though, perhaps, you could say that this new _plaything_ is being slowly warped by Naraku's sick games into that hanyou's own toy, his _doll_."

The monk gazed distrustfully at the Wind Sorceress, the sick worm of uneasiness still squirming at the pit of his stomach. The smoke from inside the hut had traveled westward and settled over the bloody image of the setting sun. An omen. "And why do you want to know where Inuyasha is?"

A smirk formed on Kagura's deep red lips and her ruby eyes glittered with malice. "Because, despite his previous defeat, he still is the only one that might be able to kill Naraku."

And, if that were to happen, she finally would have her freedom. And that—her freedom—came before _all _things.

One the horizon, the sun continued to bleed a deep crimson, now latticed with smoky rolls of black.

After a long pause, the gentle breeze of the wind sweeping over him as if in caution, the monk hesitantly nodded.

* * *

End Notes: As I said, the plot is starting to thicken and we are getting deeper into the twisted (wow, I use that word alot, heh. XD) intricacies of Naraku's and Kagome's 'relationship'. And poor Kagome is as confused as ever and Naraku's ever the bastard, but that's how we like him, ne? heh. And Kagura's being rather sneaky…

So finally they kiss! Actually, in the beginning, I didn't intend them to kiss just yet, but you know, Naraku that sneaky bastard… so they did. Hopefully, I was able to speed the story up, but still continue to unravel the plot nicely as well. In this chapter, we see a little bit more of Kagome sinking deeper and deeper as she conflicts with herself about the person she had been and the person she is now… or are they truly one in the same? And Naraku… Naraku, well, he's just a bastard, but a hot, sadistic bastard…

uhh… yeah… so please, please review (constructive criticism, thoughts, comments etc) 'cause I'd really appreciate it and tend to write more and faster when I'm encouraged by others! And it really just makes my day when I receive a review! Hehe. Thanks.

* * *

**Reviews**

**Much thanks to:**

**LadyOrion:** So I tried to make it move faster and toned down the detail, as it would be less confusing… did I at least do an okay job? I really did try… it's just I'm such a stickler for details and such, meh… (sighs) -.-;; Anyway, thanks very much for the review!

**Jasmine Fields:** Ohh, thanks so much! Hopefully this chap was just as good! ;)

**Reality:** Of course, heh… thanks for the review. :)

**darkwhispering:** Hehe, thanks so mcuh for the review! I tried updating soon… it didn't quite work out though… (sweatdrops) heh. :)

**KabukiCristy:** It's not so much that she lost her 'virginity' physically, but emotionally and mentally that she believes she has lost her 'innocence' and cannot totally see herself or the world her pervious innocence and naiveté… so yeah… that's about it, heh. :P Thanks for the review!

**DarkRoseBlood**

**Naraku's Dark Soul:** Of course! Naraku's a sadistic, twisted, mind-playing bastard, but he's a hot bastard! So it all works out in the end, heh… violence, sex, and blood—what more can a fic ask for? teehee. And yeah, I did want to make Kagome a little different and just not so… innocent and naive, though she still is, despite that. She's very confused and lost… and angry… so who's better than taking her anger out on Naraku? hehe. And thanks a bunch for being so patient and reviewing all the time! XD

**Child of the Ashes:** Ah-ah, appearances can be deceiving, hehe (evil smirk) Of course, I'm a sadist—I'd have to be with sexy, sadistic Naraku here. :P Art? Really? You flatter me! And one of my older past teachers had called my writing crap—ha! show's 'em! Mwahahahaha… just kidding, just kidding! XD Anyway, I woulda asked ya to be my beta, but you're email was cut off, so I couldn't… (pouts) But that's okay, as long as you still enjoy my ficcy! Thanks a bunch for reviewing! XD

**Fire Elfglow**

**black rose:** I tried to cut out some detail, so hopefully, it wouldn't drag on… but don't know if it worked… I tried… Anyway, thanks for the review! ;P

**Kirin Kage the Shadow Girl:** Oh, thanks so much for liking my little ol' NarKag fic! And, yes, I thought Kagome needed a little more attitude… so that's the way, I tried to portray her, heh. :D

**Otakuyoukai:** Oh really! Mine's the first Naraku as a main character fic you've read? Huh… maybe I just like Naraku too much, heh… Thanks so much! ;P

**Sakuya Kaleido:** Ah yes, Naraku is the sadistic one, but we love him anyway… or at least I do, heh… Thanks for reviewing! ;)

**ShadowWolf13:** Ooh, I'm trying to keep her IC but with some attitude, hopefully I still di it in this chap too! Thanks of reviewing. :P

**ZippyRox:** Thanks a bunch for both beta-ing and reviewing! I really appreciate it! XD

I tried moving a little faster, so hope ya satisfied somewhat, heh. :) Thanks for reviewing!

**sveta89**

**hiddensoullover**

**Shadowlover101:** blushes You're too kind! XD Thanks so much!

**dOG-GIRL**

**Morbid Flower:** well, yes it have to be slightly (okay, more than slightly) macabre with Naraku, hehe. But glad you like it! Thanks for reviewing! ;)

WOW! So many reviews! Really, I love you guys… (wipes tear) Makes a writer feel so special, heh. But, really, thanks so much for reviewing! Without the reviewers and readers I wouldn't even be here! You guys are an awesome encouragment! XD

Thanks everyone and until next time...

Ja ne!

– Scelerus Animus


	7. Between Master and Doll

Author's Notes: I'm incredibly sorry for such a long wait; it actually was supposed to be updated over a month ago, but life, as usual, has decided it just loves to screw with me. Anyway, Chapter Seven has finally arrived, a rather long chapter, which I totally did not intend for it to be, but oh well… that's how life goes. This chapter is a _crucial turning point _into the second phase of the story, so you guys might want to pay attention. Still, hope you enjoy!

Yay, I reached 100 reviews! (throws confetti)A huge thanks to all my awesomereviewers!

**disclaimer:** yup, sure, I own it… in some twisted little fantasy world of mine in which nobody seems to want to live… oh well… guess that means I really don't own it. damn.

**warnings:** general twisted-ness, evil-ness, darkness, dangerous introspective into both Naraku and Kagome's minds, and the like… this chapter is also _un-betaed_ 'cause I was in a hurry so yeah…

And without further ado…

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**Thy Soul of Sin  
**by scelerus animus

_Chapter Seven  
Between Master and Doll_

Rich brown dirt smeared her pale, porcelain hands, ever-so cool and smooth against thin feminine fingers, ever-so earthy and ever-so blemishing. Fruitful, coffee-covered soil slipped between her hands and fingers like sinuous water and caked beneath her clear fingernails as delicious chocolate cake would when a child hungrily dug into it.

Pity, she was no longer a child. In fact, Kagome no longer knew what she truly was. Simply a village maiden? A priestess? A teenager? Or… or merely a doll? Delicate and white and beautiful… but empty, hollow inside, utterly soulless.

Funny… that description sounded familiar to her. A beautiful body sculpted of old clay and graveyard bones. So lovely, so pure, so fake, a replica of what it once used to be.

Why did that sound so familiar?

Soil fell through her fingers like silk, a lively waterfall of gorgeous earth as her brow furrowed slightly, and she shoved those troublesome thoughts from her mind, at least for the moment. The earth thrived around her, living, breathing, and it would almost be a blasphemy to carelessly stain this beauty with ponderings of her petty problems.

A blasphemy. A sin. For something that once had been so pure and beautiful to be so hateful and stained and corrupt.

A description of a miko… Kikyo? Herself?

_Kikyo…_ a name so familiar, a name when spoken by Naraku, pitying contempt coursed like fire through Kagome's very veins.

On this day, when all she wanted was simple peace at mind for just a moment, why did these names of an unknown past haunt her?

Cool wind from the snow-capped mountains drifted lazily around her, and as she sweetly breathed its welcomed freshness, she almost felt at peace… almost felt she belonged. Almost.

Besides, what in the world was chocolate cake? It sounded so familiar… along with a thousand other things of which she possessed no memory…

Swirling through the air ever-so lightly, the gentle winter breeze softly blew at dark ebony locks highlighted with vibrant blue streaks like a subtle whisper of breath. Refreshing, it was indeed. It playfully tickled the back of the her neck as she once again shoved bothersome thoughts aside and continued to dig into the chocolate earth with a small spade.

The world was her own at the moment, and nothing else would disturb it.

At least, she could pretend.

As Kagome shifted and hoed the fertile ground, a pleasant yet lively melody drifted along with the humble breeze in a sweet hum, bringing hope to the arriving spring.

Hidden beneath the looming mountains' shadows, a gentle layer of frost covered the grounds, slowly melting beneath the afternoon sun. Here and there, the last fading remnants of icy winter lingered, but the chirping birds and fresh air gave way to the emerging spring.

It was an absolutely perfect time to replenish the gardens surrounding the Shrine Castle with lustrous flowers and blossoming flora.

And a perfect time to forget for a moment and play pretend with stained white fingers.

Though spring was nearly upon the snow-covered mountains a pleasant winter aura covered the land valley in a silver-white sheen of ice. Nevertheless, the smiling miko continued her cultivation of the frost-bitten soil, furiously digging up any weathered weeds ready to overflow the large yet homey field of which a trained eye could tell a blooming garden had once grown in abundance over the ample inner courtyard. Even if, presently, it was driven out by snaky weeds in the absence of the miko who had tended to the garden in past years.

And this current miko with orbs of sparkling sapphire intended to bring back the wondrous beauty the sizable inner courtyard had achieved with its numerous flowers glittering as if vibrant colors of the a rainbow.

Kagome sought to bring back lush green life to this rather barren Shrine Castle and restore it to its former superiority. Flowers that blossomed with the pale moon and wilted during the frigid cold nature of icy winter would indeed bloom in supremacy over the Castle and even the Shrine below, if she had anything to say about it.

Life flourished around her, and she could not ignore it. Would not. Even if she was merely a doll hollowed out, without purpose, without reason, only a lovely porcelain face and an empty, shattered heart, why should she spitefully hate the world, the Earth when it had done nothing to her?

Lifting her cerulean gaze from her rigorous destruction of any pesky weeds, Kagome peered out over the natural courtyard, which held so much potential beauty beneath its rich brown soil.

Still, she mused silently, even in its barren and weed-run state, it did have this icy, unnatural beauty… similar to the frostbitten grounds outside her room. Covered in a thin layer of frost, this place still whispered of something… mysterious… enchanting…

And it was not stained in the vile scarlet of sin, but in the heavenly green of life.

Shaking her head with a small laugh, Kagome resumed her peaceful gardening, becoming lost in her own little world once again; a low hum escaped her throat as she continued oblivious of the observant reddish-brown eyes that silently contemplated her simple yet somehow complex mind.

Her voice was sweet, he noticed. Made of something delicate and exquisite in melody, perhaps honey newly extracted from bees' hive or some other delicious substance dripping with sugary sweetness.

Or a deviously saccharine poison.

Humming to a soft tune unrecognized by him, he observed that she possessed a lovely voice perfect for something such as putting to young children to bed at night or soothing those who are pained with loss and heartache. It was gentle voice that was meant to ease the pain and sorrow away for just a little while during these wretched times of vile blood and cruel war.

As he chuckled quietly to himself, reddish-brown eyes never straying from her small form, he stood and exited the cool shadows cast by the section of the main castle beneath which he had been previously sitting. Hushed, like a whisper among the wind, his navy-colored hakama pants rustled faintly against the troublesome tall green grass, which occasionally dominated small patches of the inner courtyard as he leisurely strolled toward the sweet-voiced miko.

Pausing about two feet from her, he looked down at her heartily digging into the cool brown earth, taking no notice of his presence. He cocked his head, reddish-brown eyes glittering with something akin to amusement and fascination.

In the garb of miko, Kagome strongly reminded the hanyou of another miko he had once met.

Pity, that miko was dead, because she had fallen so far—so far into depsondance, into that fickle thing called _love_. That love had been what triggered that once divine miko's fall. All Naraku had done was make sure she would continue to fall. And it had been all too enjoyable to watch.

Now, all that remained was a beguiling imitation—maybe a doll—from old bones and graveyard of the miko's former self, as beautiful as she ever had been, but still undeniably dead.

Kagome, however, was not dead. And, satisfyingly, she had been a intriguing replacement for these past few weeks.

Maybe not even a replacement at all. But still a pretty doll—despite her vehement protests—that he would use to gain power over the land, then lock her up in a lovely glass case so she wouldn't get dusty.

"Is there anything you need, Naraku-sama?" Kagome spoke, not removing her gaze once from her destruction of the weeds flourishing in the rich soil. In contrast to her fiery tone when she was beyond fury, her tone was cool, almost chilly, but still not completely hostile. Only slightly irritated.

Perhaps, she hadn't been completely oblivious to his presence. Or maybe she was merely becoming used to it, though there was a stiffness in her shoulders that had not disappeared since the morning before yesterday's.

Naraku inwardly smirked at that thought.

"Is there anything I _need_, miko…" Naraku softly mused aloud, eyes flashing scarlet beneath the blazing sun. "Now isn't that an interesting question, _Kagome_…"

Below him, he saw Kagome twitch as he repeated her words, but she did not say anything, content in her silence.

A smirk twisted his pale features.

"Tell me, Kagome, what are you doing?" Naraku said nonchalantly, deciding to leave the rest of _that_ conversation for another day.

This time, she twisted around in her robes, and shot Naraku a suspicious look. "And why do you want to know?"

Amusement flickered in not-quite-red irises, and Kagome answered the hanyou's previous question before he could speak.

"Gardening." And then she continued to dig into the dark soil, getting deep beneath sneaky roots.

Casting a no less amused glance at the surrounding area where desolateness seemed to flourish in abundance, Naraku inquired, "Why? Why do you try to bring something back to life that is so obviously dead, Kagome?"

The harsh wood of the spade pressed roughly into her palm as she paused in her digging, anger suddenly flashing beneath sapphire depths.

Really, why must that hanyou always do _that_? Her pseudo-peace, oddly enough, hadn't even been disrupted by his presence as she originally thought it would. At least, not until he had said _those _words. Really, all had been perfectly _fine_ until he let those duplicitous words of his spill from his mouth. She had been able to _pretend_. Stupid hanyou.

"_Because_," Kagome ground out, "where all you see is death and despair, I see life and _hope_."

At this, Naraku chuckled, eyes glittering darkly.

"Do you really believe in such things still, miko? Your hope and your _life_—do you not _hate _this world after all it has done to you?" he taunted scathingly.

Her answer was simple and short, without hesitation. "No."

Curiosity invaded the hanyou's thoughts, an occurrence that had turned out to be rather frequent, as annoying as it was, when dealing with Kagome.

"And why is that, miko? Your memories, your love, you own _life _has been viciously ripped away from you by this _world_, which you so cherish so willingly. Why do you not _hate_ it?" Naraku demanded, sneering sadistically.

Once again, Kagome paused in her steady digging and turned to gaze at Naraku beneath dark raven bangs, a small lift to the corner of her mouth. "If I didn't know any better, I would almost pity you."

As Naraku's eyes narrowed, the miko gazed at the midmorning sky, rays of sunlight streaming on her face, warming her instantly. "How can I hate this world?" she mused aloud, that small lift turning into a shadow of a smile. "How can I hate life? It's beautiful, it's fresh—it helps me _know _that _I'm_ still alive, despite the… misfortunes I've gone through."

"Oh really?" drawled Naraku.

"Yes, it does," she affirmed confidently. "Though that doesn't mean revenge isn't sweet. It's a bitch"—her eyes flickered mockingly towards Naraku—"but it's still delicious. As a matter fact, there are probably only one, maybe two, things I truly hate at the moment."

Naraku smirked. She knew he knew what at least one of those 'things' were. Still, it was intriguing to hear it from her own mouth. "Amuse me, miko."

With dirt-smudges hands, dark contrasting ever-so prominently against white, she cocked her head and lightly tapped her fingers against her chin as if in contemplation. But the dim smile to the curve of her lips intentionally gave her away. "Ah, Naraku_-sama_, I do believe I despise… golden eyes, yes, I hate them very much. … Golden eyes turned _crimson_." At the last word, she stabbed her wooden spade into the loosened soil.

Sapphire eyes narrowed and brown furrowed, she stared at the _chocolate_ dirt, unseeing.

The abruptly she shook her head, loosening her grasp upon the wooden spade, and smiled, that light, carefree, almost false smile which spoke of an underlying danger. "But why should you care about what you already know, ne, Naraku_-sama_?"

"Oh, but I _am _interested Kagome, about what you have to say," replied Naraku silkily, scarlet eyes glittering and not with the light of the life-giving sun. Scarlet eyes that gleamed with a life and darkness of wickedness and sin. Sinful scarlet eyes. Scarlet.

Scarlet eyes, Kagome reflected as she gazed up at the hanyou, scarlet eyes that she could never could call another color… always scarlet, never crimson.

Mentally shaking such thoughts from her head, Kagome resisted the urge to snort and resumed in her digging.

"Don't you have some other place to be, Naraku_-sama_? Surely, a 'person' as important as you, being a lord and all, must have better ways to spend their time than talk to a shrine miko, digging in a garden," Kagome lightly questioned, though she couldn't hide the subtle layer of sarcasm underneath her words and didn't bother to. "Anywhere, as long as you're not bothering me," she added, muttering to herself though she had no doubt that Naraku heard it as well.

Naraku laughed, that low, scheming laugh with a treacherous undertone of silkiness and allurement that she also had come to loathe. It echoed in her mind along with sinful scarlet eyes, warping her thoughts and her mind.

"But I have come to tell you a story, miko, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to miss it," he replied, a subtle mock in his voice and in his gleaming eyes.

Kagome opened her mouth to retort, the words at the tip of her tongue naturally: _And how would you know what I want? _But she stopped, her mouth snapping shut. That line never had gotten her anywhere previously and wasn't going to get her anywhere now.

Besides, she couldn't say she _wasn't_ a little bit curious. After all, Naraku never did anything without a purpose, albeit more than often a wicked, deceitful purpose, but she could maneuver around that as usual.

_That thought, however, suddenly cause her to freeze in shock once again. As usual? She thought, not sure whether to be appalled or… well, more appalled, horrified perhaps. She hadn't gotten used to his conniving ways or—Kami-sama forbid—even him, had she? _

Nope. She wasn't going to think about_ that_. _That_ was bad, very, very bad. Like…like mixing peanut butter and ice cream! _Bad_. Very bad! …Peanut butter? Ice cream? …Jeez, what in the hell was she thinking _now?_

Tightly pressing her lips together, Kagome stopped all current train of thought at that point. Perhaps, the sun was getting to her. Sadly, it probably wasn't. Either way, it didn't matter; a headache began to throb at her temples.

The rules were very, very _simple_: when this was all done with, she would be Naraku's end and, perhaps, vice versa. Naraku would die at her hands. There was no reason for her to make the rules any more complex than that.

And why were—_must be_—the rules this way?

"Well, if you got a story to tell me, tell me so I can discover what evil scheme you have come up with now and get over with it," she snapped, gaze focused on her furious digging. Above her, Kagome could just _see_ thatamused smirk on Naraku's face, even if she wasn't looking at him. Bastard that he was…

There was a pause in which Kagome knew Naraku was staring with that damn gaze of his, as if he knew something she didn't, which he _did_, but that was besides the point, at least for the moment…

Bastard.

"I met a young women once," Naraku began as he crouched next to her, lazily twirling a lock of wavy raven hair between lethal claws, breath silky and warm against her ear. Breath and lips that she knew could wound like acid and tasted like sin. Why did that send a heated, desirous spike of _need _through her blood?

After all, she shouldn't have needed anything in a world where she had nothing left to need. Only _revenge_.

"She was very lovely, young and foolish, so naive that I could have easily killed with one strike. But she did have power, and she was the reincarnation of a miko I previously had destroyed fifty years prior. So I waited and watched." Razor-sharp nails having now twisted into more dark tresses, Naraku felt Kagome stiffen further.

"She was a silly little thing and fell in love with the hanyou who I tried to kill, as he did me, quite often. But this hanyou was the past love of the miko from whom her soul had been reincarnated. And this miko, dead for fifty years, came back to life, full of _hate _and _revenge _for the hanyou, because she believed him to have killed her fifty years prior."

"A scheme of yours, no doubt," Kagome interrupted, her voice harsh and eyes narrowed once more.

Naraku chuckled once again, except this time Kagome could feel that laugh, that voice so very close. "You know me so well, miko," he mocked.

Kagome snorted, but did not move away.

Raising a slight eyebrow, Naraku continued. "This dead miko, now only a rotted bones and graveyard soil that housed the souls of the dead, was brought back to an Earth in which she did not belong, and she despised the world, all things living and breathing, all the things full of life and hope, all the things which you, Kagome, _love_."

Abruptly, Naraku jerked Kagome's head, a gasp escaping her surprised, parted lips, until his lips—those that tasted like wickedness, a sinful addiction—where so close to her ear that they brushed against the sensitive cartilage, icily sending shivers down Kagome's spine. Shivers that were entirely unwelcome but craved. For a moment, apprehension squirmed in the pit of Kagome's stomach like a parasite that would devour her from the inside.

If her assiduously suppressed hunger for another taste of those lips—another taste of fire and sin—did not destroy her first.

Funny that she didn't notice, not even for a single second, that she did not feel a hint of fear.

"So tell me, Kagome," Naraku hissed into her eye, an unusual sign of near agitation for the hanyou as his lethal claws dug into her raven hair, twisting painfully, "why do you hope and love life when all it has brought is pain and grief, tossed you aside like you are nothing, just like the _worthless human _you are? _Why_—when it has already began your pitiful down_fall_?"

As Kagome stared upward because of her awkward position into the softly dawning sky, brilliant hues violet and red and gold painting a heavenly mural before her, she thought once more that if she hadn't known any better she would have almost pitied Naraku.

Then faintly yet still powerful enough to twist and spitefully disintegrate craftily designed plans, Kagome replied, "Because I am not Kikyo, Naraku."

There was a silence, dark and heavy, despite the dazzling golden sun vigorously beating down upon the courtyard righteously casting all shadows to far corners where they wouldn't emerge until the sun had bled into the western mountains and darkness had been cast upon the frost-bitten mountain valley again.

In contradiction, Kagome breathing was light, even, undaunted; still she felt no fear.

Slowly, with the ease as if he had been merely plucking a stray leaf from Kagome's midnight hair, Naraku uncurled his claws and retracted them from tangles of raven locks and leaned backward into his original position, neither quite sitting nor standing.

With a faintly mocking sneer twisted on his lips and utter malice flashing precariously in vivid scarlet eyes, like bloody gems beneath the shining sun, he tauntingly inquired, "And who is Kikyo?"

A sharp snort hissed between Kagome's teeth as she blew snarled strands of raven hair from her eyes. With mocking idleness (though the stiffness in her squared shoulders attested otherwise), Kagome turned and met Naraku's narrowed, damning scarlet gaze with her an airy, willful one of her own.

"I don't know."

In appearance, her words were simple, direct, unfeeling. She seemed not to care as she delicately picked up the fallen spade and, blowing dark snarled tresses from her, resolutely continued to dig into the earthly rich soil.

Especially, however, in a precarious world where youkai ruthlessly ruled the land with savage intent, appearances can be—no, _are_—all too deceiving.

Besides, Naraku, the demonic embodiment of treachery and wickedness, had taught his miko—_china doll_—well.

A faithless smirk twisted Naraku's lips, an ugly feature upon a face that could almost be called beautiful in an perfidiously alluring way yet still a trademark without which the hanyou would look alien.

"Don't you want to know, Kagome?" Soft and silken. Suffocating and snaring. "After all, what is human without a purpose, a life? Just another lowly, worthless occupation of space, another slab of warm blood and flesh waiting to be torn apart and devoured by a demon. Just a useless, pretty _doll_."

"Maybe." She didn't pause in her digging. "But I don't need to know who this Kikyo is. And…" This time, her movements stilled for a moment in another contemplation of her words. "And I have a purpose. What you, _hanyou_, don't understand is that even if life continues on around a person… they can still _love_ it, cherish it, wonder it, a human… a human who has nothing left to live for will only have _revenge _to keep them going."

And she said she wasn't a doll, Naraku mused idly, a amused glint in his eyes. If not a hopeless doll, a puppet to fate, then what was a human who watched life pass her by, loving it, but from afar, unable to join the flow any longer because she no longer had a purpose, had faith, hope?

Though, given, his pretty little miko was a more useful doll than most.

Naraku leered, possessively twirling another strand of raven hair, a habit of which he had become rather partial, around his claw.

"Oh yes, miko, I know the greed of stupid humans, their revengeful emotions, their twisted sense of _love_, which leads to their downfalls.

Softly, Kagome laughed. Wasn't Naraku listening to his own words? After all, the same could be said about demons.

"But what you don't understand, Naraku is that I can be _content_. I will have my revenge, and I will be _content_. Because I am able to _love_ life."

Scarlet eyes narrowed; an unnatural curve of the lips which could almost be called a frown appeared.

Behind her, Kagome knew Naraku was irritated, scarlet eyes gleaming, pitch black contracting into slits. It amused her.

As he leaned close to her, lethal claws digging into her hair, a sometimes painful habit that Kagome had realized with amusement that Naraku seemed not to have noticed, Kagome absently reflected that Naraku oddly smelled like the earth, rich and real. Almost satirically, she wondered if he had enough life, enough human in him left to smell like that in the first place.

Or was that just another deception?

Kagome felt the urge to laugh once more.

"And that worthless emotion mortals call _love _will cause you to fall into a Hell from which you will never be able to escape, Kagome," he hissed silkily into her ear.

Maybe, in a time before time, she would have pitied him.

Perhaps it was just instinct, but Kagome somehow knew that once Kikyo had pitied him. Kikyo also hated all things living in the wretched world. Kikyo despised _life_. And now Kikyo was dead, a walking, albeit beautiful, doll who lived off the souls of the dead.

Kagome was not Kikyo. And she didn't care. Didn't have the _will _to care any longer.

Kagome almost pitied Naraku. Almost but not nearly close enough.

Unintentionally but not carelessly, with a slight pitying amusement tingeing her sweetly melodious voice, Kagome softly murmured, "Maybe when I kill you, I'll pity you then."

With her back turned towards him, the only reaction she could perceive was the tightening of the deadly grip on her dark knotted locks. She flinched but the pain did not override her near sadistic amusement.

"How far _my_ miko already must have fallen to find that amusing," he murmured into her ear, once again, as addicting as he was lethal.

Inertly, Kagome shivered; her palm burned.

Perhaps she should have been afraid. Should have been afraid of Naraku, of his wicked ploys and of his ability to destroy all good and turn into it evil.

Really, the wisest thing to fear was fear itself, isn't that what she had always been told?

"My _love _for life will not be my downfall," Kagome stated, and she was surprised at the hollowness of her tone. At that moment, she felt she had never spoken truer words, and she didn't know why.

This time Naraku laughed. "But I never said that Kikyo's downfall had been her love for _life. _She had loved _golden eyes_."

And maybe Kagome should have feared that warning. But it was something neither her nor Naraku realized at that time.

After all, the word _obsession _almost had the some meaning as _addiction_. Some even twistingly confused those words with the word _love. _Either way, one was just as dangerous as the other.

Yet, being the stubborn girl that she was, rarely had she ever listened to others. At least, that was her theory. For honestly, she knew nothing about her former life, had no identity.

Still, at the moment, what she feared the most? What threatened to rip feet her content, if not oblivious, life as Shrine miko, watching life continue to exist and thrive around as she gently urged it on, from beneath her sturdy if not exactly stable feet?

As she unwillingly had admitted before, the _unknown_—that subtly silken voice of Naraku's which encircled the mind with temptation, and those scarlet eyes which gleamed of duplicity, and those lips… those lips that tasted of sin, a misleadingly saccharine addiction—_it _all threatened to destroy. Everything.

And even if neither she nor Naraku knew it yet, _it _all was succeeding.

Besides, pretty china dolls were neither good or evil; they were soulless. But then… could pretty china dolls feel desire? Could they feel other then hollow revenge? Or were they merely captive to their owner's desirous schemes? And couldn't the some be said about masters _obsessed _with their possessions?

"Oh, but Naraku, I _know_ how far I've fallen, and I can assure, I've been dragging you with me the whole way down."

Kagome was not Kikyo, Naraku knew this. And she claimed to not be a doll.

Yet, unbeknownst to her, Naraku already owned her.

In this twisted game of virtue and sin, deceit and truth, who would win?

Who would fall? The miko who thought she had already fallen or the hanyou who thought he was watching mockingly as she fell?

Or would they both fall—_drag_ each other down—together?

Treacherously, Kagome could sense the conversation spiraling down into a entrapping, abyss-like depth of which even she was cautious, so before Naraku could make a scathing remark in return, she inquired, "Izumi-san asked me to visit the village market this afternoon. Would you like to join me, hanyou?"

Surprised for only a dash of second, that customary smirk twisted Naraku's pale, sharp features in a wicked grin as he replied with cruel tenderness close to her ear: "Yes, I will, miko."

And, if their precarious descent had already begun, would they ever reach the bottom, or would it just be an endless, tortuous, cyclic fall to nowhere?

* * *

End Notes: Wow, looks like Naraku and Kagome have really gotten themselves entangled into this twisted game of theirs. Mwahahahahahahaha.

Anyway, I realized that I haven't included Kanna and other such details of the more recent anime episodes in the ficcy yet, and honestly, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that any more. When I first started writing this on pure whim over a year ago, I had intended to include Kanna and many other things, but for some reason the original plot has just gone away with me till I ended up with where I am at now.

So there are plenty of plot holes and inconsistencies that I never intended, but ah well… what can I do? Honestly this fic was started on a very vague, sketchy idea, and only now am I really starting to bring things together. My apologies to anybody irritated by that fact, but I'm trying my best and that's all that I can really do.

Much love and thanks to all those who have encouraged and supported me thus far, and I hope you will continue do so as this story enters into its second phase!

Reviews are greatly appreciated and constructive criticism is always considered. Both are loved foods for the starving authoress! Thanks.

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**Reviews:**

_As you know, I'm not allowed to put in review repsonses (which I think is still stupid)I won't reply individually like I usually do. Besides, that was one of the reasons this fic wasn't updated a month ago as it was supposed to be; unfortunately, I simply don't have that much time anymore. Just know that I appreciate and love every review you guys leave!_

Many undying thanks to: **DarkSaintofChaos, sakuya-kaleido, Marik's girl, Child of the Ashes, yami1, Emerald-Eyed-Faye, Morbid Flower, BadBoysMistress, Aurric, Shadowlover101, KattSano, SweetestChick, Otakuyoukai, ShadowWolf13, sessygirl6, The Bagel Guy, AngelKelley17, dumdeedum, Skitzoflame, seshhomaru's babe, kirasilver0506.**

My goodness, so many reviews! Really, it just makes a author all warm and tingly inside, heh. (sniffles) Ah, what would I do without you guys? Probably, take an even longer to update, jeez. (sighs) Thanks for all the encouragement! Love ya all! Heh. XD

And till next time…

Ja ne!

– Scelerus Animus o.O


	8. In this Mock of Perfection

Author Notes: … –runs and hides–

**disclaimer: **nope. nada. –pouts–

**warnings/notes:** NarKag, general twisted-ness, more dangerous introspective and foreshadowing… yay.

Many thanks to _ZippyRox _for beta-ing this long-awaited chapter. Hope you enjoy!

And without further ado…

* * *

**Thy Soul of Sin  
**by scelerus animus

_Chapter Eight  
__In this Mock of Perfection_

Silently it sat upon one of the higher shelves, perhaps to ward off dust that would dare to mar the beauty it was able to keep motionless and wordless, as if perpetually stuck in a time where it would be forever lovely and pristine and valuable. Indeed, the porcelain doll seemed to gaze down at Kagome with an eerily solemn air.

Like its equally flawless china skin covered by a delicate, immaculate silk kimono and elegantly manufactured china face lightly airbrushed with pink to give it an endearing blush and pouty painted red lips almost hauntingly fixed somewhere in between a knowing smile and a jeer—yes, those glassy, painted eyes of the deepest jeweled blue stared, even taunted Kagome as if they saw, they knew.

Saw truth. Knew fate. Kagome's fate.

Kagome's fate as a beautiful doll, as refined and as fragile as porcelain and just as wretchedly cold, unfeeling. Emotionless. Helplessly trapped to her inevitable fate, never to love _(except for life, because a mocking kiss to the lips is just that, nothing more, nothing less, right?)_, never to feel _(and those clawed fingers tangled in her raven hair meant nothing, right?)_, only allowed to hate and desperately seek solace in revenge with that same pained smirk upon her inhumanly beautiful face, never to fault because that wasn't an option.

Like secret whispers that she could no longer hear, those dreams and slips of memories _(if those in fact had ever truly been real… were they?)_ that had plagued her continuously the first couple of weeks after she had awaken without an identity no longer beleaguered her in hazy, painful flashes of sounds and colors, screams and blood _(though they were splattered upon the edges of mind like a bloody mural)_.

She wasn't sure why, but they undoubtedly had ceased. Or perhaps she was merely immune to them now.

After all, a person with no soul of her own can't be touched _(a stroke, a kiss, nothing, nothing)_.

All she had left to which to cling was her hate and her revenge, and a fathomless hollowness, a gaping hole in her heart, in which to drown.

Nevertheless… as she had told Naraku, there was still hope in this oxymoronic world, even if it was unreachable to her. Thus, if solely by mere ingrained habit, she always would wistfully chase her slowly disappearing happiness in the distance. Because something not entirely automatic, mechanized, mindless—something not entirely doll-like—still resided in her: this _hope_.

Although, certainly, it all was a hopeless cause in the end. Those painted blue eyes knew.

After all, those eyes were soulless, and they looked upon the soulless.

Kagome saw her reflection in those pretty, empty glass eyes, and she saw her future.

_(absently she wondered, if one day her beloved hope would drown in the infinite void, the gaping hole, that was her heart)_

"I think… I would like to buy that doll."

Reddish-brown—plump dewdrops of scarlet red swimming in mud—eyes shamelessly examined Kagome with faint curiosity, if not mocking amusement, flickering in ever changing, devious depths. "Was it not your purpose to purchase necessities for Izumi-san, not to buy material items? After all, for what does a miko need a porcelain doll?"

"And purchased the things for Izumi-san, I have," retorted Kagome curtly, gesturing to the items in her arms. "Besides, I thought to give the doll to you since you seemed to be quite obsessed with them, Naraku-_sama_," Kagome added, not without the slightest bit of sarcasm acerbically dripping from her lips like poisoned honey _(so thick, sticky that for those who became caught in it escape was impossible)._

"Oh, but I already have one, miko," Naraku silkily assured her, casually twirling a stray lock of raven hair loose from Kagome's messy bun around a clawed finger. "And I am rather fond of this doll."

"That can be dangerous, Naraku-sama," Kagome warned in a disdainfully saccharine voice, a pained but taunting smile curving her sweets lips, a painted smile that jarringly resembled the doll's. "After all, what happens when that doll, by your own hands or other means, breaks and you are left all alone, no longer having your little toy to play with? Honestly, isn't that a mistake humans make: to attach themselves so foolishly to something so that when it is gone, they feel the loss?"

Unsurprisingly, Naraku's eyes narrowed, precariously flashing a sharp, lethal crimson as they appraised Kagome as if with the ability to see into one's soul. Kagome didn't even flinch.

Even if Naraku had the ability to look into one's soul, which he came close to being able to do but not entirely, Kagome wasn't sure if she had enough of a soul left anyway.

"Oh, but miko, if ever my pretty little doll ever breaks, I have the ability to fix her," Naraku replied with a not-so-gentle tug on raven locks.

"Not everything can be fixed, Naraku-sama." For a moment, Kagome's perfected smile wavered and acquired something that could be compared to a sneer, venomous and scornful _(and still somehow hauntingly beautiful). _"Or didn't you learn that the first time around?"

"And what about you, Kagome?" hissed Naraku. "Do you enjoy repeating your mistakes over and over again, always to the same fate?"

A nonchalant shrug. "I'm human. Humans are doomed to repeat their mistakes over and over again. It's our way of life."

"How pathetic."

"Then why do you do the same? And why do you put up with me and my _foolish_ human mistakes?"

"I'm not as foolish as to throw away a doll that still has use, miko," Naraku replied coolly, words still a fatal poison that could not be detected. "Or do you wish to be a forgotten toy once again? I had thought you'd be rather tired of that by now."

And in her mind—a mind with jagged, potentially harmful fragments of memories that she could not trust—the lovely image of the soulless doll inevitably cracked and shattered.

Cracked and shattered like the strange woman's—no, no that's not right—her _mother's _China doll she had dropped when she had tried to get it down from the high shelf in the living room when she had been ten. But, certainly, that image—_memory?_—couldn't be real… could it?

_(a bloody mural, crimson handprints of her past smeared grotesquely on the walls, echoes of the dying)_

For a moment, Kagome numbly swayed, colors a vigorous whirlpool of psychedelic dimensions around her, and she was in an alternate era that seemed almost familiar, a faraway dream that she could never grasp no matter how much she ran. Voices and images and emotions that she almost recognized but not quite, like looking at another world through a paper screen.

Perhaps she was not as immune as she had thought.

Abruptly, Kagome became aware of the warmth that supported her, the steady breath against her skin, and the silken lips, which she knew to be curved in a demonic smirk, that ghosted against her ear in a noiseless laugh.

As if a wave had just brutally crashed down around her, Kagome harshly jerked herself back into the reality of now. The reality in which Naraku infinitely resided. A heartless reality that didn't have a place for broken human dolls.

Clawed fingers still tangled in her hair, a darkly silken voice murmured seductively, "Then you will make your own place in this world, Kagome."

And such a tempting offer that was. Possibly even more enticing than thought of having her memories returned to her.

With rigid, forced movements and a stiff spine, Kagome brusquely turned and wordlessly exited the small keep while bloody eyes of scarlet and glassy eyes of deep jeweled blue surveyed her, both mocking, both knowing.

_(so would her hope drown in the gaping hole of her heart or in addictive pools of devious scarlet?)_

Allowing her dark tresses to slip easily from his claws, Naraku unperturbedly watched her leave. As she disappeared from sight _(but never from his awareness)_, he allowed his presently scarlet eyes to flicker lazily over the porcelain doll with which Kagome had been so wholly transfixed.

Indeed, it was an elegantly crafted doll, an inanimate but indisputably beautiful object eternally caught in the hourglass of time, fixed in its place. And perhaps the jagged crack that now marred its painted porcelain features, harshly piercing one unseeing, jeweled sapphire eye, only enhanced the doll's beguiling allure.

With another soft, darkly pleased chuckle and flash of fanged teeth, Naraku also exited the small shop into the noisy bustle of the crowded market—a common mortal's version of choas.

As he moved through the flurry and buzz of ignorance and mortality, Naraku apathetically noted that the aura of oncoming chaos was now far closer.

Idly, if not with a touch of malice, he mused as to what his miko, who did not yet even realize the power she inertly possessed, would do.

Surely, it would be intriguing to watch.

**.  
. ... .  
.**

_(time slowed, a single brilliantly scarlet bead of blood wavered precariously, finally fell, splattered, vivid, vivacious, and a life was so plainly, effortlessly destroyed)_

Whirling billows of dust brutally whipped against Kagome's pale face, grains like deadly needles, easily tearing the delicate flesh, but Kagome only resisted more determinedly and pushed back against the fierce wind with more force as she strung another arrow.

In a proximity far too close for comfort, an inhuman roar sounded through the whistling wind, already overflowing with chaos—panicked screams of terror, helpless cries of the villagers.

Massive and monstrous, the demon emitted another horrendous roar, slimy and screeching, like the sound of skulls crunched between bloody fingers, and took another earth-shaking step farther into the mountain village bathed in crimson flames.

_Where did that demon come from?_ Kagome irately wondered, wincing at another biting gust of wind as she steadied her bow, aimed, and unleashed an arrow in a vivid streak of pink.

As the local miko in the region, she had encountered demons many times before but never one with such a magnitude as this, especially one that had attacked the village directly. This reeked of suspicion.

As she raised her arm in an attempt to shield her eyes from another flurry of spiky, pin-like dust, Kagome's brow furrowed in further irritation. Perhaps an arranged confrontation?

A vibrant burst of pink briefly blazed through the hazy smoke and hungry crimson flames where the arrow struck the horned demon on his spiked shoulder, but the demon merely staggered for a moment and continued his relentless obliteration of the petrified village.

Silently cursing, Kagome desperately tried again to hurry through narrow, crowded, crimson-inflamed market streets and find a closer position where she could attack that demon the best.

Heat from the raging flames ruthlessly scourged her skin while ash and smoke blackened her clothes and clogged her throat.

"Run to the mountain caves and hide!" she shouted to the terrified villagers still trying to navigate the burning streets. Screams and pleas pitifully filled her ears, her mind, the wretched cries of the dying, but, honestly, the only chance of saving these people was to destroy the demon, so she pushed on.

Stumbling over debris from a demolished stand, Kagome roughly fell to the oddly cool dirt, splinters from stray wood digging forcefully into her palms like the crushed broken bones of those already dead, and barely escaped a heavy wooden beam that had suddenly collapsed and would have indisputably smashed her head open.

Coughing harshly, Kagome obstinately, if only a tad shakily, stood and continued toward a cliff edge that would surely give her a better aim at the demon.

Once there, Kagome instantly strung another arrow and took careful aim.

The demon roared. Crimson flames raged. Sapphire eyes narrowed. Kagome released her arrow.

With a vivacious surge of glittering pink amongst fiery crimson, her arrow struck true. In another wave of swirling smoke and crumbing dirt, the howling demon gracelessly tumbled over.

Consequently, the earth immediately quaked beneath her feet, crudely splitting and rupturing, jagged chunks rising in the air as Kagome lost her footing and plunged over the edge of the disintegrating cliff.

Oddly, Kagome didn't scream—though with her sore throat so copiously clogged with dust and smoke and ash, like a clawed hand covering her mouth, intent on smothering her, it was uncertain whether she had the ability anyway—but she muttered hazily, "I wonder where that damned hanyou is… Naraku…"

And then instead of a bone-shattering collision—like a budding drop of blood bursting, splattering, life ending, mind numbing into a fading oblivion—as she expected, Kagome landed with a rough, abrupt jerk on a strangely pleasant, soft, warm bulk.

The abhorrently heavy smell of smoke and ash was welcomingly permeated and masked by the musty smell of earth and animal fur. In her dazed state, Kagome felt the sudden, irrational urge to giggle.

_But really_, she mused abstractly, _the fur—it tickles. And the aura... The aura is fierce, but not… not menacing. How unusual… the aura of a demon—not menacing. All the demons that I've met so far, their auras are always dark, menacing… wicked… Like Naraku. Naraku who—Naraku—Naraku—_

With silent gasp of pain, glittering ruby bloody slickly trickling down her chin, Kagome jerked up, lily-white porcelain hands marred, dirty and bleeding, fiercely clutching clumps of pale yellow fur.

—_Naraku who is probably laughing at me for my inattentiveness—and this whole situation in general. Naraku—bastard—_

Presently, an authoritative but uniquely feminine voice disrupted the beginning of Kagome's vindictive wordless rampage: "I'm so glad I caught you, miko-sama. I almost thought I wouldn't make it when I first saw you fall."

Silently cursing her restrictive injuries and her resulting carelessness, Kagome promptly cleared her mind and assessed the situation. Wind bit harshly at her face, more like cruel icicles, however, and not the relentless whirlwinds of dust and debris, like thousands of minuscule teeth maliciously tearing at her skin.

Currently, she was riding high in the chilly skies above the fiery mayhem, on the back of a rather large cat demon. With a jolt that surprisingly pained her more than her actual injuries, Kagome distinguished the horned demon amongst the unrelenting flames and the tortuous screams that came along with it.

Resolution once again firm, Kagome turned her head to examine quickly the supposed owner, or companion, of the flying feline.

Before her sat a young dark-haired woman garbed in the distinctive outfit of a demon exterminator.

_(who are you? who am I? can you please tell me?)_

**.  
. ... .  
.**

Shock rippling through her body, like some type of instant-spreading, sense-numbing medicine, Sango stared indubitably into the face of Kagome Higurashi and knew in that precise moment, somehow, that this young girl—_woman_—before her was inexplicably not the same Kagome Higurashi Sango had known when she'd gone missing.

This fact was only further proved to be truth when Sango continued to stare, voice caught in her throat as if swollen with sticky spider webs, in Kagome's exclusively unique sapphire eyes and could not perceive any recognition swimming amidst their infinite depths.

Certainly, Kagome's appearance had changed… drastically. Sango herself had not recognized Kagome when she had first spotted the priestess fearlessly firing arrows at the errant demon. Nor even when Kirara had caught Kagome in the nick of time had Sango recognized her.

Dressed in apparent miko garb far more elegant and finer than Sango had ever seen: light blue hakama, swirling silvery-white patterns of Sakura blossoms on the sleeves of a brilliant white haori, despite the grime and smoke and ash residue that coated it… and Kagome's hair, still lustrous and black as ravens' feathers, but longer, wilder, secured in a striking tumble of knots and twists by silver chopsticks that gleamed equally radiant in the light…

Yet despite all of that, there was something deeper about this Kagome— endlessly deeper, that had altered…

Fear now viciously surged forth, despite Sango's aversion to it, especially when it surfaced because of… Kagome, who had been Sango's best friend for as long as she'd known her.

Nonetheless, it did, like a beast released from its cage, and it was because of Kagome… because Sango, who always had been able to read Kagome easily and know what was on her mind, could not discern a single thought or emotion in those sharp sapphire eyes…

Abnormally sharp sapphire eyes that shined with such a mystifying, almost haunted aura beneath the initial darkly severe determination…

Indeed, Sango was stunned. Perhaps, part of her was even appalled…

_What had happened to Kagome?_

"I apologize for my rudeness, but I need you to take me closer to the demon!" Kagome snapped, tersely breaking Sango's trance as she uncovered these horrifying truths.

Still, for a moment longer, Sango noticed, almost tentatively, listlessly, that Kagome's attention had fully returned to the crisis at hand, sparing no further inspection of Sango herself. No surprise. No recognition.

Only the cold, commanding, if not forever respectful, acknowledgement that an aid to a miko—_Kagome, that was what she was now; Kagome, the icily powerful, beautifully dangerous miko_—should receive.

Perhaps, it was the mere effect of the shock Sango experienced at the moment; nevertheless, in that same disjointed way, Sango then noticed the garish, vivid crimson blood that liberally tainted Kagome's eerily pale, almost ethereal-looking skin.

Hideously, it surged down Kagome's form in lively streams of shimmering red, seeping profusely, vilely into the shimmering cloth of one particular sleeve of Kagome's haori, staining, then dripping from her blistered fingers, plump bloody beads of life, onto Kirara's fur or the abyss below. Even so, as if numb to everything else, Kagome simply strung another arrow with adroitness that Sango had never seen.

Dark eyes wide etched with fear, horror, Sango stuttered, "Ka–Kago—"

"We need to go higher so I can get better aim!" Kagome interrupted heatedly, bleeding and beautiful and someone who was utterly unknown, inexplicably foreign to Sango; a priceless figure to be observed and praised but never touched. "Now!"

_What had happened to her Kagome?_

"Damn it!"—Sango noticeably flinched at the word, sounding so alien and severe on Kagome's tongue—"Are you listening to me? There are people _dying_!"

Those words, fierce and passionate and wholly selfless, struck a distant chord in Sango's mystified mind, the echoing reminisce of an idealistic fifteen-year-old girl from another era who Sango had known and loved dearly. Like her own flesh and blood. Like… a sister.

Undeniably, those words were the bitter echo of another loved one Sango had lost, but they also were a needed, albeit fading, symbol of hope, and Sango clung to that vanishing, wispy notion desperately.

"Kirara, higher!"

Thus higher and higher they soared.

And wider and wider did Sango's eyes rapidly become as fear, misery, sorrow—all unseen beasts that eternally haunted Sango's heart, ravenously scraping at the throbbing muscle, shredding it to fleshy irreparable pieces—overwhelmingly converged in dark, anguished brown depths like a glass teetering on the edge.

With these horrified eyes Sango was forced to face reality, to watch Kagome—_who was this miko, so frightening and tauntingly exotic drenched in scarlet?_—as she deftly aimed her pulsating arrow, fearlessly released her purifying storm, and screamed in all her self-righteous fury.

"Die, you bastards, die!"

Then Sango's own frantic hollers (for Kagome, for Miroku, or for any kind of savior) echoed louder and louder when Kagome's bow abruptly slipped from her pale, limp grasp as she fainted, glimmering scarlet waves of blood teeming liberally over her slumped form like some kind of twisted, elegant kimono—indeed, a beautiful doll dressed for perfection.

_(some loved her, some hated her, but no one knew her except for one—she was his flawless china doll after all)_

* * *

End Notes: So I can't apologize enough for the agonizingly long wait, but I am eternally grateful to all the reviewers and readers who have encouraged me and supported me. This chapter was undoubtedly different like how all the rest of them are, even if slightly, because my moods and styles are ever-changing. A little rough in my opinion but ah well. Hopefully you stillenjoyed it and want more!

Updates should be faster because usually I have more time to write during the summer, so perhaps now I won't get so many threats concerning my lack of updating. –smiles– Just kidding, I truly do appreciate all the reviews I've gotten. I'm so amazed at the support! Squee! I love guys!

Seriously though, updates _will_ be more frequent.

Reviews are greatly appreciated and constructive criticism is always considered. Both are loved foods for the starving authoress! Thanks.

And till next time…

Ja ne!

– scelerus animus o.O


	9. To Devour the Pomegranate Fruit

Author Notes: Hmm... I kind of disappointed at the lack of repsonse to the last chap... what? did kill everyone off with boredom or just sheer crappy writing? -pouts- I mean, somebody please tell me! Constructive criticism is always welcome and loved. And to those who did review, I utterly LOVE you guys. Seriously, you're what kept me writing this story even when I didn't want to. And so, on a more joyous note...

_Thy Soul of Sin _is finally finished! YAY! That is, I've finally finished writing it. After this chapter, there is only three more chapters left before the end. So updates should be fairly quick. At the most, monthly, depending upon the repsonse I receive and whether I can get my lovely beta to look over the last chaps. Ah well. It's DONE. XD

**disclaimer:** Hah. Never have, never will.

**warnings/notes:** the usual.

And without further ado...

* * *

**Thy Soul of Sin  
**by scelerus animus

_Chapter Nine  
To Devour the Pomegranate Fruit_

Despite the fact that the undeniable embodiment of beauty lied ripe and divine and utterly unawares before him, no wisp of his normally insatiable, lecherous intentions dared to flicker through his mind for even a moment. In fact, as he scrutinized this exotic creature who seemed of celestial origins but unmistakably born of flesh and bones, Miroku strangely had no desire to even touch that lily-white, glowing skin which seemed so flawless and delicate in spite of the glistening array of filth, dried blood, and raw pink lacerations.

Perhaps, she wasn't as unmistakably born of flesh and bones as he had first perceived. Instead, she seemed to be made up of something far more delicate and refined, possibly glass, even fine porcelain.

If he were to touch this foreign beauty, he would surely break her. Shatter her into a thousand irreparable pieces and mindlessly watch as those invisible jagged shards of her life slice deep into his skin. He would completely destroy that haunting, unnatural beauty that seemed to uncaringly overwhelm his own aura with its beguiling, dangerous power.

Indeed, this outrageously odd notion had somehow leeched into the core of his mind, greedily wrapping around his pounding brain to suck out all coherent thought, and had absolutely refused to let go.

Kagome Higurashi. That was her name. Indisputably. But that did not mean this was same person. This creature—this priestess, a _miko_ bred to perfection—was gracefully fragile and frighteningly dangerous at the same time.

And Miroku observed and concluded all this while she slept unconscious, beaten and bloody, weaponless but definitely not harmless.

Shifting almost anxiously, Miroku sighed.

"_She…Kagome has changed," _Sango had whispered to him in an abnormally pained, broken voice, as if all of her hope had washed out of her, waning as the moon does with time, except for Sango it wouldn't return like it had previously.

Miroku was hard-pressed not to follow her in a wash of despondency.

In all the situations of past where everyone else had fallen into distress or panic, Miroku had always been able to keep calm and collected, able to think logically and clearly. Not this time, however. It was affecting everyone, including him.

How cruel and twisted the world had spitefully proved it could be with one simple act, one single wish.

Briefly Miroku's keen eyes flickered over the miko's right hand, somehow small and fragile even speckled with dark splashes of dried crusted blood, lying immobile at her side. When Kaede had healed some of the minor injuries and cleaned and dressed the more serious ones, she had grimly mentioned to Miroku about the mark etched purposely into Kagome's right palm.

A scar that subtly glowed an unpromising scarlet red as if open wound that wouldn't heal, Kaede had gravely called it. A symbol that spoke of an ominous future for them.

Now Miroku discerned the edges of it in the curve of the Kagome's palm and could not help but agree with Kaede. Something not quite right superficially exuded from that bizarre scar; another quality to add to Kagome's already worryingly powerful, fluctuating aura.

The probable notion that Kagome had allowed someone _(like Naraku, whispered an evil voice in Miroku's mind which he adamantly ignored) _to intentionally _engrave_ that in her palm with evident brutality disturbed Miroku too much for his liking.

Moving warily, Miroku leaned forward to inspect the inauspicious scar closer.

Abruptly Miroku frowned, brows furrowing over darkened eyes, hands clenched slightly tighter than usual around his staff.

It was kanji, the scar etched in Kagome's ashen bloodstained palm. Unfortunately Miroku was unable to distinguish all of it. In truth, he wasn't sure he wanted to know what it said _(claimed, declared, revealed)_.

With another resigned sigh, he carefully slid nearer to the prone Kagome—_could he truly call her by that name any more?_—despite the persistent urge to move further away,and gently placed a damp cloth on her forehead, instinctively brushing away wild raven bangs.

In the next moment, vivid crimson blood liberally spurted from a severe slash on his face caused by the silver chopstick that he hadn't managed to dodge in time.

"_Who_ are you?" were the first callous words that spilled from Kagome's red lips, which were twisted into a fierce snarl as she crouched defensively in the corner of Kaede's hut, blankets twined around her, raven hair askew and tumbling chaotically down her bandaged shoulders as a river of black, icy sapphire eyes flashing lethally, almost inhumanly, like an unpredictable predator that had been bothered while sleeping.

As he clutched his staff in front of him with one hand while the other hand was pressed against the deep gash on his cheek, vibrant blood of the richest ruby red sliding sickeningly down his hand and dripping distinctively onto the hard tatami mats, Miroku stared at Kagome, struck speechless, flooded with shock, even as some darker, knowing part of his mind wasn't surprised at all.

Innocent, pure Kagome had attacked him. Attacked him, viciously, mercilessly, and with skill that possibly matched his.

Even though it was safely embedded into the wooden beam beside him, Miroku could still feel the scorching vibrations of the sleek silver chopstick that nearly had pierced his left eye only a moment ago.

Now it struck him with full, ruthless force that this was not Kagome.

No, the Kagome he knew had a sunny, welcoming smile that shined for anyone and everyone. Not thin, eerily red lips that seemed stretched so unnaturally into a distrustful snarl, which further hid the fake, immaculate smile one simply knew those bloodless lips normally formed.

The Kagome he knew had starry, brilliantly sapphire eyes of unprejudiced innocence, of astoundingly pure goodness and righteousness. Not darkly glittering eyes blazing with a taunting tinge of wicked scarlet fire, eyes that held mysterious and untold secrets, the unforgiving eyes of a huntress out for blood, for _revenge_.

Her eyes were similar to the eyes of the miko Kikyo and different in an all too fatal way.

Gulping imperceptibly, Miroku spoke in voice he hoped was calm, reassuring: "Please calm down Kagome. I'm Miroku, remember?"

A sharp, biting, unbelieving reply, and Miroku forced himself not to flinch.

"No," Kagome retorted with a hiss, seeming to tense even more. "I don't know you."

In one smooth movement, a captivating dance of foamy silver waves and dancing sakura blossoms, Kagome swiftly removed the second chopstick entwined somehow both elegantly and frenziedly into the knots and coils of her silky hair as black as night, and deftly held it in front of her, a petite seemingly innocuous weapon that Miroku knew was all the more lethal in her slender white hands.

Again, Miroku cleared his throat and shifted, slowly standing up, carefully, as if he feared any sudden action would have a potentially destructive, adverse effect on Kagome.

With wary eyes he watched her as he hastily searched his mind for words that would perhaps pacify this raging, celestial tempest before him. Fortunately, before he could make another disastrous attempt, there was flicker of something other than bloody scarlet flames, a whisper of a ghost from the past, a phantom haunting the forgotten void behind Kagome's glassy blood sapphire eyes.

Everything stilled, as if subsiding into the eye of a storm where time paradoxically existed as a relic of the past, and Kagome murmured faintly, almost absently, more of an unsure query to herself than to Miroku: "Should I?"

Another timeless pause in which Miroku's eyes widened entirely bewildered.

More mutters. Light. Mellifluous. "Should I know you?"

Then a snort, coarse and mocking. Satirical. "Now isn't _that_ the question. Should I _know_ you?"

Like the crack of a whip, time resumed in a fashion similar to the whining turn of an old, overused wooden wheel, and Kagome snapped back to reality, painfully unfamiliar and indubitably unfriendly sapphire eyes full of bloody vengeance gazing unflinchingly into Miroku's soul.

Yes, that was another thing. Another thing… different about this icy temptress, this Kagome. She easily gazed into his soul and gave no indication that she truly cared about him. Except for the distant compassion that as a miko she gave to all inferior creatures, of course.

All he was to this beautiful, heartless Kagome was another meaningless fish in a fathomless, black, black sea where she unfeelingly hunted and annihilated anything that got in her way.

Her way to power.

Her way to revenge.

"But it doesn't really matter, does it?" Kagome continued in that same melodious, scornful saccharine voice, a repulsively false smile now twisting her red lips.

Abstractly, Miroku decided that he preferred the snarl. At least, he knew that snarl resembled nothing of the Kagome he knew. That smile was so enchantingly similar, nearly sweet and benevolent if it didn't contain that curve of poison to it, or if wasn't so bitterly artificial.

"Settle down, child. Ye are going to reopen ye wounds," Kaede suddenly interrupted, startling Miroku and disrupting the thickening tension in the stifling hut but no where near breaking it, unfortunately.

Now Kagome effortlessly stood without any jerking or cringing or belaying any indication of pain or injury, as if to disapprove and throw dirt upon Kaede's inane suggestion.

Indeed, she was elegance and beauty personified, Miroku distractedly mused. A wintry and cruel beauty.

"Who are you?" Kagome repeated, voice as steady and smooth as ice and just as frosty. "And why am I here?"

"We are your friends," Sango said hopefully as she too entered the hut, carrying a basket of herbs in her arms. "We went to the mountains to find… Naraku, and instead found you. So we brought you back to safety, back where you _belong_."

Tightening her hold on the sleek, razor-edged chopstick in her pale hand, Kagome scoffed disbelievingly.

"I remember you. You helped me destroy that horned demon," she said dispassionately to Sango, raising Sango's spirits and ripping out the optimistic foundation upon which they were based in the same disinterested breath. "However, do you think I am a _fool_? Who are you to take from my _home _without my knowledge? Who are you to decide where I _belong_?"

"Kagome, trust us—it's your memory, please," Sango urgently beseeched her, as if she could sense the Kagome she knew was gradually becoming completely lost to her with each moment that passed. "Please, Kagome—it's Naraku, he's done something, something with your memory… Kagome…"

"And _who _are you to speak of my relations with Naraku-sama?" Kagome irately interrupted, surprising even herself with her perceptible vehemence at the taijiya's words.

"Naraku… _sama_?" whispered Sango, features morphing into one of complete misery and despondency.

Looking at the taijiya's face normally cheery and lovely now so overcome with desolation, Kagome could not bring herself to feel anything more than a faint sympathy, possibly even a vague empathy at one point, which she felt for all things that had ill-fatedly slipped into a pathetic existence.

"Kagome… you've been… mislead," Miroku attempted to explain slowly, cautiously.

"Friends. Love." Kagome stated flippantly, dark eyes glancing at Miroku once again. "What need does a miko have for these things? Isn't that that right, miko-sama?" Kagome offhandedly added with disdainful politeness as her eyes flickered temporarily to Kaede.

"I know, Kagome, you're understandably confu—" Miroku tried again only to be cut off brusquely.

"More specifically, what need do _I_ have for these things?" Kagome stated, her tone becoming faintly acidic like scentless, colorless venom that blisters upon touch. "_Friendship_. _Love_. Only more opportunities for me to be cruelly stabbed in the back, aren't they? _Aren't they_?"

"But we would never do that! And you… the Kagome I know would trust us!"" Sango cried, unthinkingly. However, it was too late to take back her words and hide them like a mouse that covets everything in its home.

With agonizing slowness, Kagome smiled and spoke in a beguiling saccharine tone. "That's the question, isn't it? Who am I?"

As she stared mutely, motionlessly at Kagome Sango's next words chocked bleakly in her throat. There was something so vilely, unexplainably wrong with this Kagome. In one moment she deceivingly echoed parts of a familiar, passionate Kagome while in the next she was once again that cold-heartedly perfected miko who emanated a powerful and not exactly malevolent but precariously warped aura.

Luckily, Miroku was able to gather his words to respond. "You are Kagome Higurashi. Our friend, our companion in our search for the _Shikon no Tama_. You honestly don't remember any of this?"

Smile still fixed in place, eyes still cool and eerily glass-like _(as a pretty, pretty doll)_, Kagome merely continued to gaze at them apathetically.

Surely, they knew who she was. They knew her past.

Most likely, they could give her an identity, a _life_, a _meaning _to the name—_Kagome Higurashi_—that she had always used but never known why.

"Please," pleaded Sango desperately, "_trust _us, Kagome."

Yet could she trust them?

And, better yet, did she even want to?

"Why?" she questioned callously, while internally she absentmindedly wondered why she had trusted Naraku freely whereas she was reluctant to even consider trusting these people whom she knew held only the purest, concerned intentions for her. "Why should I trust you?"

"Child, ye need to rest," ordered Kaede. "Ye've retained some nasty injuries from your battle and it's apparent that your memory has not returned. There are also a few strange scars that should be taken care of. For example there is that mysterious cut, which appears to be a scar, on ye cheek, and on ye palm—"

With her free hand, Kagome swiftly drew one of her blue chopsticks—not quite as sharp as her unique silver pair but just as effective—from her sash and deftly threw it, promptly cutting off the old miko. It landed with a forbidding ring in the wooden frame of the doorway, precisely an inch away from the old woman's ear.

In her right palm, the hand clenching the silver chopstick, a burning sensation fiercely seared across it, a poignant sensation that should have stung unbearably but merely tickled somewhat and actually warmed her.

Resisting the sudden ridiculous urge to take her chopstick and viciously, pitilessly kill them all, Kagome also stifled a sardonic laugh. How far, far, immeasurably, infinitely far she had fallen. Especially into the fathomless, treacherously addictive world of bloody mendacity and swirling sinful scarlet that was Naraku's perverse game.

"Neither of us will ever win…" Kagome murmured idly to herself.

No. She didn't want to trust them.

Besides, she already had a purpose. A purpose in a world that was drastically different from the taijiya and the monk's. Her world was a clandestine one bathed in endless rivers of scarlet, founded upon a barbed oath of deceit and sin, and nurtured by the dying screams of all those inferior, worthless.

A world where revenge was the proverbial pomegranate fruit.

Nevertheless, that did not mean that she would not listen to them. After all, these people were obviously weary, forlorn, and in frantic need of help. And as a miko she would naturally help them in any way she could. Of course. Wasn't that her job? Her purpose? At least, according to those not a part of her enigmatic world that existed in the bloody shadows of the night.

Once again, Kagome resisted the maddening urge to laugh.

Amber gold eyes would die. A million excruciating, bloody, vengeful deaths. Certainly, by the taijiya's reaction to her careless words, these people knew where to find those loathsome amber gold eyes so she could be liberated in her revenge and obliterate those damned eyes in the most atrocious, malicious way possible.

Then… after that… she would be content, as she had told Naraku. Naturally Naraku would add some kind of cryptic new element to entertain her, and Kagome vaguely wondered what would be the next intriguing stage in Naraku's blasphemous game of the wretched world and all the inferior beings in it, but otherwise she would simply be _content_.

_Content with Naraku_ _beside her._

"Kagome…?" Sango hesitantly inquired, wondering what Kagome was muttering furiously to herself even as she steadily regarded them with her glassy eyes of a swirling, distorted sapphire stained with an unnatural, frightful bloody scarlet.

"Do you know of a hanyou with golden eyes?" Kagome nonchalantly asked, though the deepening fire gleaming like rapacious whirlpools of bloody scarlet that would unremittingly devour all in its path for retribution in her eyes proved otherwise.

Taking silent notice of how both the monk and the taijiya stiffened considerably at those words, Kagome inwardly smirked and continued in that same chaste tone, a fallaciously saccharine, placating smile incessantly plastered artfully on her lily-white features.

"You spoke of a _Shikon no Tama_, didn't you? That name… is familiar to me." Kagome cocked her head slightly, the brilliant rays of mid-morning that leaked through the doorway of the tension-filled hut accenting the striking blue highlights in her curling raven hair. "As I said, I am no fool. There are things I remember. Vivid, horrible flashes of blood and screams and amber eyes."

"Inuyasha…" breathed Sango, eyes widening further with horror with each passing moment.

"Yes, him. I loved him," Kagome confirmed impassively. Perhaps that was what frightened Miroku, Sango, and even Kaede the most: Kagome's chilling apathy when she spoke of him, of anything.

"I loved him," she continued, "and I trusted him. Don't you agree?"

Presently, she moved, taking one single step forward in what seemed to be a tauntingly slow, sinuous movement, her clothes whispering against her lithe body which merely reinforced the haunting impression of a celestially ethereal specter she conveyed. In her right palm, from which exuded a faint uncanny scarlet radiance, her chopstick was poised like a slender symbol of the power and threat she posed.

"I trusted him," Kagome stated. "With my life. With my heart. Even with my _soul_."

Another soundless step forward. And all Miroku, Sango, and even Kaede merely could do was stare, frozen, immobile, _transfixed_.

"And he _betrayed_ me."

She was so close to them now, this inconceivable, mind-blowing force of ambiguity.

_Who was she?_

None of them could even begin to comprehend. This Kagome, who seemed like a lifeless puppet to her revenge at times while at others, was as vivacious as the Kagome of the past.

_What was she?_

"And you truly expect me to fall into that despicable trap all over again like some naive little girl, don't you?"

Then she paused and her wild raven hair obscured her pale face for a moment as she stared down with murky eyes at something none of them could detect.

"Kagome…" Sango dared to breathe though her hoarse voice was no louder than the wind.

"You want me to trust you, isn't that right?" Kagome queried calmly, voice having reverted back to its serene, disturbingly detached tone. "Then first you must do something for me."

Words unremittingly caught in her throat, Sango simply moved her mouth in unheard words of distress, but a new shine of hope sparked in her anguished brown eyes. With wrinkled suspicious eyes and a stony face, Kaede also wordlessly examined the perfidiously esoteric girl before them.

While they were all curious, albeit that curiosity was tinged with uncertainty, it was Miroku that tentatively spoke for all them.

"And what… do you wish for us to do?"

That poisoned, saccharine smile, as appalling and faux as it was to them, seemed to stretch abhorrently across Kagome's porcelain white face, causing the sparse beams of glittering sunlight to crudely accent the peculiar pallid scar that curved down her left cheek.

"You must take me to those gold eyes," Kagome replied dismissively even whilst her voice cunningly glided through the uneasy, almost opaque atmosphere like a mesmeric melody that was blithe and dulcet to the ears as it merrily corrupted you from within. "You must take me the hanyou… Inuyasha."

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End Notes: So what did you think? Tell me. Comments and constructive criticims are food for the starving author. And usually a good bribe to get me to update, especially now that I've finished writing the rest of the ficcie. :D

Hope you enjoyed! Till next time...

Ja ne!

– scelerus animus o.O


	10. Trust Means Little to the Soulless

Author Notes: Yes, the next chaper has arrived!

Thank you so much to all who reviewed! I may not have been able to reply to you all, but I still love you guys! Especially to those who gave me suggestions as to editing my sometimes excessive use of detail. -cough- I shall be editing the previous chapters as well, but it will be a slow proces, so be patient please. XD

**disclaimer:** disclaim'd.

**warnings/notes:** the usual; unbetaed.

And without further ado...

* * *

**Thy Soul of Sin**  
by scelerus animus

_Chapter Ten  
Trust Means Little to the Soulless _

Tormented voices and screams and the distorted faces of people frantically scratched and clawed at the edges of her mind, but Kagome did not bother with them, for soon enough she would have answers. In due time, she would _know_ and not simply have to uselessly prod and question and guess from neither the ambiguous, splintered pieces that had continuously plagued her nor addictive scarlet eyes that ensnared her in game from which she was afraid she would someday never _want _to escape.

And, nevertheless, even if she never truly _knew_ the whole truth _(wasn't it fascinating how her priorities had changed, how everything changed like the careless turn of a page in book)_, those amber gold eyes would be dead, never to roam this unholy era again with his greedy lies and selfish claws. Never to haunt her. Never to torment her. Never to betray her again.

_(and now that was what mattered most to this soulless doll; she did not need an identity; she did not need the truth, for the truth would still be a semi-lie anyway; all she needed was that one last chance of revenge, of white hair and gold eyes deaddeaddead before her) _

Not that these people knew. Kagome had not told them yet. For a logical reason of course _(not that logic had even been one of her strong points, Naraku had once pointed out, but then again they didn't live in a logical world, did they?)_. Because if they had lived in a world where logic flourished, then Kagome would have been able to tell them, the houshi, the taijiya, and the old miko, that she intended to kill those damned golden eyes.

However, she could not, because they would not understand. They, in the deluded self-righteous beliefs, would try to stop her (_not that Kagome herself could comprehend why they would; the taijiya, Kagome remembered, once had someone important taken away, a nameless boy in one of Kagome's dreams, and the taijiya sought revenge for that, did she not?)_, and Kagome could not allow that.

Though she had a vague suspicion that the houshi had already speculated over some of her intentions, Kagome was not concerned with it, because in the end he would not stop her either.

Steadily the group _(a ragtag group, Kagome remembered, that title echoing irritatingly in her head, but now the group was a couple people short)_ trekked through a dense forest, occasionally passing beneath slender shafts of glittering light that the brilliant mid-morning sun managed to radiate between the above canopy of thick twining branches and lush green leaves that in some bizarre way bared a crude resemblance to a vast spider web.

Despite the fact that it was the houshi and the taijiya who were supposedly leading her—albeit reluctantly, not that Kagome particularly cared—to Inuyasha, Kagome was at the head of the group heedlessly traveling through the complex sticky forest with ease as if she knew the unknown destination toward which they traveled.

And perhaps she did, another cracked whisper of her past, a trivial background at the hazy edges of her mind vividly highlighted with crimson blood and tortured screams and endless death.

Shifting her lean bow (which the taijiya had apparently saved in that battle against the horned demon and had finally returned to her) across her back, a frown momentarily marred the flawless mask of a doll's coldly serene chiseled face that she had perfected.

Although she no longer paid much actual attention to those disjointed pieces of an exceedingly futile, fragmented past, it did not mean they weren't a nuisance.

Around her the atmosphere was annoyingly heavy, moist, and warm.

In fact, it was too heavy, almost grossly opaque, and too moist and warm, tremendously humid, sickly, stuffy _(how can life breathe properly in this, Kagome distractedly wondered)_,a stark contrast to the usual cool, fresh air that pleasantly wafted through the Shrine Castle _(her true home, her mind whispered secretly, another fact these people would, could never grasp_) comfortably nestled deep in the heart of snow-capped mountains.

Then again, Kagome idly mused, piercing icy eyes briefly flickering back to her silent companions (the taijiya was silent for now, but Kagome knew the fight wasn't out of her yet), she was only speaking of the weather while the rest of them were sweating under the tension they ignorantly had placed upon themselves.

After all, other than the slight thumping curiosity the rocked periodically against her ribcage like a telltale clock counting down the hours of one's life, Kagome was completely at ease.

"Tell me a story," Kagome lightly after a few more heavy (not to her, of course) moments of silence, effortlessly slicing through the palpable tension like razors claws through soft flesh, and she nonchalantly smiled her perfidiously perfect grin.

Presently, the houshi _(Miroku, Kagome distantly recalled, from another mindless flash of blood and screams and death)_ wordlessly surveyed her, wary of the duplicitous games she played far too well. As a nod of approval Kagome lazily met those sagacious brown eyes and briefly her seamless synthetic smile transformed into something equally disturbing in Miroku's eyes, an almost sinister, calculating smirk that undoubtedly will forever be imprinted upon his mind like a foul engraving behind closed eyelids.

"How about you, houshi-sama," Kagome suggested in a trained, saccharine voice as she glided like a feather light ghost in her glossy silvers and wispy blues around another blossoming green bush. "You claim to know of a past I lived as your companion, so why don't you tell me a story to pass the time. A story about a miko and a hanyou and—"

"Kagome—" the taijiya, Sango, tentatively interrupted.

"—and a kitsune. Because there was a little kitsune, wasn't there?" Kagome continued with that same brutally blasé tone, though the slight widening of her red lips belied otherwise.

Oh, yes, she knew. There had been a little kitsune, once upon a time. And when that particular image had shot unexpectedly through her mind like an arrow in the bleeding heart that she no longer possessed, it had been accompanied with another gaudy flare of tortured shrieks and freshly spilt blood glinting such a vibrant crimson in the sunlight.

"I wonder what happened to him. Can you tell me, houshi-sama? Taijiya-sama?" Kagome mocked in such a sweetly serene voice that sent forbidding chills down Miroku and Sango's spines.

Sango stared, mouth opening and shutting wordlessly like a helpless fish stranded on land. Her face seemed to be infinitely contorted into a expression of complete despair and horror. It was bittersweet and piteous to Kagome but she could feel nothing more than a vague sense of sympathy for these people.

After all, it was not her fault that they had yet to realize that a cultured miko—_a soulless doll_—who had a hollow black hole where her heart should be could feel nothing more for them.

Nor what is it her fault that she had learned to the play the duplicitous game in an equally adulterous world so well.

"Why don't you first tell us more about… Naraku-_sama_," Miroku proposed with swift thinking.

_Clever_ _one_, Kagome conceded mutely as that all too familiar name—the _only _familiar name in her world—as smooth and darkly enticing even on the superficially polite tongue of the houshi sank bitterly into the very marrow of her bones, causing her muscles once again to tense even as a faint, perplexing sensation of anticipation well up inside of that fathomless void she once called a heart.

Surely, Miroku and Sango noticed the change, however slight, merely the sound of Naraku's name always caused in her.

At the sheer utterance of Naraku's name, a bloody scarlet glowed intensely in Kagome's normally jeweled sapphire eyes, something other than an endless hollowness or a vindictive fire flashed in Kagome's sapphire eyes, and both Miroku and Sango took dual note of it, now that they recognized it. It was a poignant mesh of various shades of reds that swirled tantalizingly and disturbingly around her contracted pupil like the first stages of a brutal storm, and it was distinctively different from the fiery blaze that appeared at the mention of Inuyasha.

"Naraku-sama…" murmured Kagome in a curiously languid voice, rolling the name across her tongue like a succulent chocolate to savor. "He is the Lord of the Shrine Castle."

"Indeed?" Miroku responded with collected politeness while an air of outrage started to materialize on Sango's flushed face. "He hasn't… held you captive against your will or hurt you in any way?"

Subtly, hidden beneath the silvery white sleeves of her haori, Kagome clenched her right hand and responded with a trace of disdainful amusement, "No, not in the sense you are thinking, houshi-sama. Despite my lack of reliable memories, I do know that the most thing accurate thing I remember is the sensation of pain and blood and betrayal. Don't you think so, houshi-sama?"

"And what of the mark upon your hand," Miroku questioned shrewdly. "Kaede-sama mentioned it before we left. And I also saw it. Naraku did—"

"_That_," Kagome interjected fiercely, "is none of your concern. Another matter that you will never be able to understand."

Brows furrowing noticeably, Miroku began to reply when like a weatherworn tree teetering precariously on the edge of a disintegrating cliff Sango burst, "Don't you understand Kagome? It was Naraku—"

"He tried to kill you," Kagome disrupted imperturbably. It was a callous, deliberate shot of the proverbial arrow, and Kagome did not even waver with the vaguest sign of sentiment as it struck Sango straight in the heart.

Instantly Sango quieted, stared, and wordlessly realized how much Kagome looked so out of place bathed in one of the sparkling golden shafts of sunlight that streamed onto the lush forest floor. Everything around Kagome was so warm, so vivacious in a tender, amiable ambience while she contrasted vividly against the charmingly tepid atmospheres with her wintry features and delicate, almost translucent appearance like an odd specter intruding upon the land.

"Yes," Sango agreed hoarsely.

"He took someone important from you, and you want revenge for that," Kagome continued impassively, milky white features schooled into a chillingly emotionless mask upon which not even a devious faux smile graced. "And you, houshi-sama, seek revenge for that curse in your right hand, which you know has not truly disappeared because Naraku-sama is alive. Don't you?"

"But Kagome," Miroku tried to reason steadily, "before your memory loss, you loathed Naraku like all of us. And you wanted to find the shards of the _Shikon no Tama _and hunt and kill him, too. However, the final battle did not turn out like we had… hoped."

"But you presumed you had destroyed Naraku-sama, as foolish as that assumption was," Kagome derided, toneless voice still distressingly formal. "Thus whatever may have existed between us, whether camaraderie or friendship that supposedly outlasted time, was _destroyed_ and not by Naraku-sama."

"But why…" the taijiya hesitantly spoke, broke off, and then spoke again. "Why do you stay with Naraku?"

"I had no one else. I trusted no one else," Kagome replied, unperturbed, and effortlessly ignored Sango's flinch.

Again, the houshi tried, and Kagome stifled the urge to scoff.

"So… you trust Naraku?" the houshislowly questioned with ostensible cordiality, but Kagome could easily hear the spike of pain beneath his gracious words, stabbing and stabbing like an incessant sword, a reopened wound that the disappearance of the kazaana had only temporarily closed.

For a moment Kagome tensed and didn't answer, mulling that notion around head, a conflict on which she had dwelled previously for days on end, all nail-biting and hair-pulling and frustration, so truthfully she had never found a definite answer.

_Trust._

The idea was sugary and tantalizing in her mouth, a succulent sweet that possessed a chewy toxic center, and Kagome she knew she would be a hypocrite if she said yes.

Trust was something which she claimed to scorn, and she did, but Naraku was a whole different matter, a whole different game. And that was another thing to add to a rapidly mounting list of things they would never understand.

"Yes," she said, and now both Miroku and Sango cringed.

Suddenly Sango lurched in front of Kagome and grabbed her forearms, whitened skeleton fingers coiling into sleek silvery fabric not purposely harsh but a desperate reaction, as if despite everything Sango wasn't sure that Kagome was truly there.

Kagome barely repressed the automatic reaction to fight back _(a stab through the eye with a chopstick and it would be over, how heartless)_.

"He's playing with you, Kagome. He only wants the _Shikon no Tama_," Sango protested, voice hoarse, eyes frantically searching Kagome's liquid pools only to find that scarlet swirls steadily raged in them and they didn't burn so much like fire as they did like ice.

"Again you speak about something that doesn't have meaning to me," Kagome replied and then she continued, wrenching herself out of Sango's death grip.

"It should," Miroku cautioned with an ominous tone that doubtlessly carried some cryptic meaning that Kagome easily ignored with a soundless scoff.

Presently, she paused in her curiously methodical, leisure pace and angled her head back slightly so now they saw her chiseled, milky white profile juxtaposed harshly against the dazzling rays of the sun in a unnervingly crystal clear indigo sky.

"Either way, it comes down to a simple fact which you seem unable to understand—"

In the leafy verdant green canopy above, a few birds merrily chirped a sweetly amiable tune that forebodingly sounded in Miroku and Sango's pounding ears like a mournful melody played at a burial ceremony.

Kagome was dead to them. And they hadn't been able to say goodbye.

"—I don't care. Except for the contentment I seek. But first… first I need my vengeance upon traitorous golden eyes, and you will _not _stop me."

Kagome had thrown whatever diminutive caution she may have had reserved to the wind.

There was that bloody glimmer in her eyes again, a pinprick of scarlet, an addicting taste of sin that led down the final bleak stretch of the complete corruption of an innocent fifteen-year-old that once had dreamed of a fairy-tale ending.

Ultimately, both they _(Miroku, Sango, their names a fading echo in Kagome's mind)_ and that fictitious fairy-tale ending were unimportant, trifling doubled-edged pieces to a jigsaw of a past that she would never discover entirely, and she would not allow them to prevent her from attaining her goal.

Curtly, Kagome turned once more and in another fluid, sinuous movement she entered a painfully familiar clearing beyond another cluster of twining trees while as if unwillingly mesmerized by her, this exotically beautiful paradoxical being, Miroku and Sango wordlessly followed her with equal expressions of dread and misery.

"You will not stop me as I _destroy _him…"

Before them, a white-haired hanyou in a ragged firerat kimono was pinned lifelessly to a massive tree _(the God Tree, Goshinboku, once an eminent symbol of a past that now had reduced to a meaningless haze of colors and sounds)_ by several weathered arrows.

"…_Inuyasha_."

* * *

End Notes: Only two more chapters left! Yay! Review, tell me what you think, and I'll love you forever. C'mon, comments and constructive criticism are food for the starving author.

Hope you enjoyed! Till next time...

Ja ne!

– scelerus animus o.O


	11. Lies Don’t Last Forever, My Love

Author's Notes: So the second to last chapter. Wow. Hope you guys enjoy! Thank you so much to all those who reviewed! You guys make my day, seriously. You don't know how much those mean to me. :D

**disclaimer:** Hah.

**warnings/notes:** the usual; unbetaed.

And without further ado...

* * *

**Thy Soul of Sin  
**by scelerus animus

_Chapter Eleven  
Lies Don't Last Forever, My Love_

"What is it that you want, Kagura?"

Suppressing the natural urge to lash out viciously, Kagura stood stiff as her narrowed ruby eyes warily searched the murky chamber in which no light permeated except for the few stark slivers from the muted silvery light of the waning moon that filtered through the slightly ajar shoji door behind her.

Like the contemptible spider that he was, Naraku undoubtedly lurked like a crude silhouette of a spider web stretched across the familiar sakura-patterned walls in the many shadows that crisscrossed the room in various shades of blackness.

Not that Kagura would state that aloud. No, at least not at the current moment. While she would take gluttonous pleasure in further inciting his blatant displeasure, the Wind Sorceress had no present desire for personal injury.

All the same, Naraku was rather irritated about something, Kagura noted with a vague sense of sadistic amusement. Perhaps he missed his precious miko? Kagura savored those thoughts like luscious honey sliding sensuously down her throat. Now wouldn't that be perfectly ironic? Or was she his pretty little doll, born of hate and raised by vengeance?

Kagura mentally scoffed.

That haunting sapphire-eyed girl… she had indisputably transformed into something not entirely human but certainly not anything demonic… and what intrigued Kagura the most was how she had changed Naraku as well, as blind as they both were to that obvious fact.

In Naraku's vile scarlet eyes, Kagura knew that the girl Kagome was more to him than merely a toy, an _obsession_, a _doll_, no matter how much both liked to determinedly deny it.

In truth, Kagome was more to him than that lifeless corpse Kikyo ever was.

"Don't make me repeat myself, Kagura."

A tempered sneer defiantly painting her blood ruby lips _(though they would never be as wickedly bloody as Naraku's, and she smirked triumphantly at that), _Kagura acquiesced and reported in a craftily even tone: "The houshi and the taijiya are bringing her back to the Goshinboku where Inuyasha's lies, just as you expected."

In a darkly sinuous movement, the shadows seemed to shift. Kagura dimly perceived an absolutely malicious smirk treacherously accompanied by a fiendish flash of gleaming pointed fangs that threatened to send a prickly wave of chills down her spine like a scurry of spider legs across her flesh,

"I believe I should pay my lovely doll a visit."

"I would be careful about that presumption, Naraku. That girl is not Kikyo," Kagura warned disdainfully, aware that she was taunting with an abnormally perilous fire but also secure with her part in their duplicitous game. "Besides you wouldn't want it to appear that she is more to you than merely a doll, though obsessions are all too dangerous themselves."

Although Kagura didn't know she was echoing unwanted thoughts that had disturbed Naraku's mind previously, twining themselves across his reason and logic like sticky strings of gossamer, they still were deliciously effective.

For a piercing moment, everything stilled, slithery shadows immobile, darkness infinite but stale, as if there was an unseen war between two omnipotent forces, opinions juxtaposed, and reason and logic and purpose fickle and clashing. Through this Naraku remained markedly silent, and Kagura smirked in a soundless victory.

That girl Kagome, whom Naraku had thought to easily manipulate into his paramount plan like a helpless puppet to his spindly web of puppeteer strings, had come like this ghostly, fragile-looking being and dismantled his games and schemes and rebuilt a ultimately more warped one of her own, spitefully dragging Naraku into a parade of wild raven hair and ethereally pale porcelain hands and eerie sapphire eyes.

It was a tantalizing collision of powers that precariously balanced on a thin line of love and hate, lust and blood, and Kagura would be almost sick of their melodramatic game if it hadn't been so fascinating to watch these two drag each other down into their own sinfully created hell.

"Do you miss her?" Kagura tauntingly questioned in a smooth, cloyingly innocent voice, fear of Naraku's volatile wrath having melted beneath the honeyed mockery in her words.

In the next moment, starlit bursts of a hideous scarlet erupted agonizingly before her glazed ruby eyes, and she barely choked back a flaming shriek of pain as she was ruthlessly slammed into the waterless stone fountain situated in the center of the dead rose courtyard.

For a long period, Kagura merely gasped difficult breaths into her burning throat amongst a sizeable cloud of upturned soil and debris, the shattered, jagged remnants of the stone fountain lying in unsalvageable disarray around her trembling, bleeding form.

When the dusty haze settled and she finally raised her head in a sluggish, aching movement, irately blinking dirt and coppery blood from her stinging ruby eyes, Naraku was no longer there.

**.  
. ... .  
.**

Dark crimson blood stained the ground in massive coagulated splatters around the _Goshinboku_ like a frozen lake disrupted by sickening red icebergs. The immense trunk was also dyed the dark crimson of dried blood, and as Kagome mindlessly stepped closer to the prone hanyou pinned against the timeless God Tree she noticed that Inuyasha's firerat kimono was now merely a bloodied, filthy mass of tattered material and once lustrous silvery white hair was matted and tangled with numerous clots of more dried blood.

He was the epitome of wretchedness, Kagome sardonically concluded. This weak, pathetic hanyou pinned helplessly to a tree. How had she ever allowed such a pitiable thing to betray her?

_(and how she had seen him in this exact position in another time before time and thought him a beautiful angel, she dryly wondered)_

In fact, now that she took more curious note of it, the whole area surrounding the Goshinboku was nearly demolished, uprooted trees and withered flora, the blackened remains of countless fires, deep gorges where the more violent attacks had viciously taken place.

Then there was the blood. More of it. Oceans more of it. Dried and cracked streaking vilely across the verdant land and the dead earth like old scars that would never fade. Though, undoubtedly, the majority of it was nauseatingly centered around the Goshinboku, caked on like acrylic paint on canvas.

Except this macabre portrait of a life long forgotten was reality, although to Kagome it was a detached reality in which she did not exist. A past places of existence that held no meaning for her any longer. Like a grain of sand in an hourglass, falling, falling, falling, merely a passage of insignificant time, a flutter of a butterfly's wing, a blink of an eye.

Evidently a battle, vicious and brutal and decisive, had taken place here. Ostensibly, it had been the crucial Final Battle, which would decide anything and everything. In a time before time, Kagome could recall in hazy crimson blurs that these people _(and she) _had placed their entire lives upon the outcome of this battle.

How foolish of them. The lucky ones had lost their lives while the rest had lost so much more.

You can give and give and it will never be enough, Kagome mused as—like predator that had finally caught its prey in her grinning razor teeth—she agilely climbed the thick, bloodstained roots of the Goshinboku toward the motionless hanyou.

After all, as nature was immune to the sufferings of humanity and devoured all that was given without any sort of miniscule reparation in return, Kagome would therefore take what she wanted—what she _deserved_—what was her inherent right to have and to possess in her bloodied hands, to free or to kill.

It was her right, and she would seize it. Caress it in slender porcelain hands. Crush it beneath nimble, lily-white fingers.

_("…you will take what is yours," Naraku whispered in his wickedly silky voice, a brush of velvet lips against her ears, a euphoric taste of sin and temptation, "and you will rule this wretched world.")_

Kagome could taste that memory, so temptingly prominent against the distant flashes of a past filled blood and screaming, on her tongue, sweet and tangy and oh so satisfying.

She dreamed of peace and contentment, and if the path to that was paved with Naraku and games of power, then she could, would do that.

Because she _trusted_ Naraku _(a fool, wasn't she?— she knew, she didn't care)_, and she had vowed the day that she had awoken with memories gone except for occasional splash of blood and screams and death that she would never trust the golden-eyed hanyou Inuyasha ever again.

As she continued to climb the tainted roots of the Goshinboku at a curiously leisure pace the rough stained bark was peculiarly warm and contrasted so vividly against her ghostly pale hands. Although that sinful burgundy blood was several weeks old and crusty beneath her fingers, Kagome could almost feel the ungodly sensation of slick, freshly spilt blood sliding generously between her fingers, and she found she was not repulsed at all.

Absently, she wondered whose blood it was now at this moment. And then the next as she climbed a little higher. Because this was the wondrously blasphemous portrait of the life she couldn't remember, and it included the blood of all those she had loved and those she had hated.

And of course who was in the middle but the golden-eyed hanyou himself.

The one who had ripped out her heart, leaving a gaping black void in its place, and hadn't even cared enough to give it back to her in a bloody mass of fleshy shreds.

Soon Kagome reached the top and paused crouching on all fours barely an inch away from the bright, glaring red Inuyasha's hakama. Around her, everything stilled as if suddenly caught in another timeless vacuum; the unmoving air was stale and drab; the distant voices of the houshi and taijiya fall deaf upon her ears.

With a soft, sibilant sound between red lips, Kagome breathed.

Deeply. Elatedly. Hungrily.

Poignant bursts of copper wafted lavishly through the air, filling her mind and exploding in abundant spurts of garish crimson before her eyes like a lovely display of fireworks. She could taste it as well, a salty concentration of life that teetered on coppery death.

Unhurriedly, she rose, crawling over Inuyasha's immobile form, her hands ghosting over tattered fabric like fluttering moths encircling a beguiling flame.

Again, through moist red lips, Kagome sucked in a shallow breath and breathed.

Everything culminated into this one single, succinct moment, a mere speck of menial time to an omnipotent, omnipresent universe, but it didn't matter because after this she would be the goddess of her universe, her own future controlled by her own slender hands, the past a forgotten memory buried in a time capsule that would never be dug up.

Through mindless days of witty barb and twisted webs of devious scarlet that still clung to the edges of her eyes in spidery veins, her view of the happenings around her had gradually morphed into the simplistic convictions of a doll's, where all else was meaningless, living and breathing solely for one single purpose. It was a jerky, mechanized dance of revenge and bloodlust that she had warped into a wickedly artful purpose.

"Inuyasha, Inuyasha," Kagome murmured coyly, laughingly, as her hands slid through filthy, knotted, blood-encrusted white hair. "I used to wonder why you betrayed me, how you betrayed me. I used to burn and bleed with a desperate craving to know my past, my identity."

Porcelain hands, scarred and beautiful and timelessly dangerous, dug fiercely into his battered red haori as Kagome gracefully leaned up; lips twisted into a bittersweet smile, whispered with mock affection against strangely warm, pallid flesh.

How appropriate, Kagome sardonically mused, that he remained so vivaciously warm while she had become so deathly cold.

"But I don't care anymore," Kagome murmured almost seductively. "Are you finally listening to me, Inuyasha? _I don't care. _I don't need to know my past, my fabricated identity, my supposed purpose, because I already have one and it doesn't include _you_, Inuyasha. And once you're dead, you won't hold anymore power over me ever again."

Then she kissed him, inhumanly icy lips pressed to his warm lips, a meaningless final gesture, and took a step back, fluidly pulling out one of the arrows embedded into his arm at the same time.

With meticulous precision she firmly grasped the arrow in her slender hands and pointed it, the tip beginning to blaze with an incandescent blue as she deftly pressed it into the flesh directly above Inuyasha's heart.

"This time I won't miss," Kagome whispered, a mocking smile on her stretched ruby lips, a hollow reminiscence of a girl Kagome had forgotten long ago, an innocent girl that this hanyou, _Inuyasha_, had mercilessly killed no matter how indirectly.

So she smiled that cruel soulless smile—

"_We've finally completed the Shikon no Tama and defeated Naraku! And I'm going to give it to you, Inuyasha, but you better know I trust you to think about what you're going to wish for, mister—"_

—her grip tightening decisively around the blazing arrow—

"_So what is it will you choose as your wish, Inuyasha? The kazaana has already disappeared from my hand, so my goal is complete, but what about you Inuyasha?"_

"_Yeah, you dummy head, stop staring at the jewel and make a wish! It can't be that hard—"_

"_Shut up, you little brat!"_

"_Oww, Kagome! Inuyasha's being mean!"_

"_Was not! Stop complaining you little—"_

"_C'mon we've gotten this far, can't you two stop it for a moment? But really what are you going to wish for? Inuyasha? …Inuyasha… please… don't tell me you still want to be a full demon… Inuyasha? …Answer me please…"_

—shoulders stiffening resolutely—

"_Run, Kagome, run!"_

"_No! Sango, Miroku! Shippo…"_

"_Kago—argghhh—"_

"_Shippo, no! In–Inuyasha please, please you're not your self—Inuyasha, listen to me! This—this is not you! Ca–can't you hear? I know you're in there! Inuyasha, please! Listen! …no… no… no! Inuyasha, please—no, Inu—"_

—sapphire eyes shot through with unearthly strains of scarlet glittering victoriously, and—

_Vicious razor-sharp claws already stained with the blood of her comrades and friends plunged ruthlessly through her abdomen, blood splashing, splattering upon the green earth like a vile sin for which one can never repent, her life gushing out of her at an inexorable rate._

_Ravenous fangs clashed and snarled, dripping red-tinged saliva, while hot breath seared across her suddenly cold, clammy flesh._

_Kagome helplessly stared, sickened, transfixed by Inuyasha's once gorgeous golden eyes now warped into a predatory, demon-like slits surrounded by a beguiling crimson, harsh and cruel, like a swirling ocean of blood in which she would forever drown._

_She stared at him with dying eyes of fathomless sapphire and whispered, "Please… Inuyasha, I love…"_

_Then Kagome breathed no more, utterly broken beyond repair._

—collapsed on her knees in a sinuous flutter of shimmering silver and blue fabric, her grasp on the arrow slack as it hit the wood with a definite slap.

"I can't do it, can I?" Kagome muttered hoarsely to herself, nails scraping furiously into the rough, bloodstained bark of the Goshinboku until her thin fingers started to bleed fresh, vibrant blood. "_Why _can't I do it? Why can't I _kill _him?"

And a voice, velvet and sin wrapped addictively together in a sticky spider web of a devious trap, replied:

"Don't tell me you still _love _him, my lovely china doll."

Then from behind Naraku thrust a razor-clawed hand into her back and chest.

* * *

End Notes: There you go! How was it? Still exciting, I hope...? Per usual comments and constructive criticism are food for the starving author.

Anyway only one more chapter to go! Whee. XD

Hope you enjoyed! Till next time...

Ja ne!

– scelerus animus o.O


	12. Sin Never Tasted So Sweet and So Deadly

Author Notes: So, finally, the last chapter arrives! Hurray! This story has taken me nearly three long years to finish, and now that it is done, I'm rather content. I would once again like to give a colossal THANK YOU to all those who reviewed, read, and kept supporting this story no matter how many trials it went through and how long it took me to write it. Your encouragement is largely why this story ever got finish, so once again, thank you!

Hope you enjoy the last chapter!

**warnings:** some sexual situations/lime; the usual norm.

**dislcaimer: **disclaim'd.

Without further ado...

**

* * *

**

**Thy Soul of Sin  
**by scelerus animus

_Chapter Twelve_  
_Sin Never Tasted So Sweet and So Deadly_

"_Do you still love him, my lovely doll?"_

_A lascivious kiss to her swollen cherry red lips, and Kagome drank it all in, knowing that she was poisoning herself with his honeyed lies and cruel taunts but didn't care because that hanyou named Inuyasha had slowly been killing her for years._

_"No," she whispered in return, legs encircling his waist as he brutally slammed her against the wall. Naraku had never been nice—deceptively amiable, yes but never truly nice—and she didn't expect, didn't want him to be._

_"And you will kill him?" he murmured, more of an amused, derisive statement than an actual question. _

_With long elegant fingers that tapered into lethal razor claws, Naraku slid the silvery white haori off her shoulder as his lips—velvet, pleasurable sin—traced the curvature of her jaw in a moment of faux gentleness._

_But Kagome didn't want gentleness, so she hissed between her teeth and bucked fervidly against Naraku's lean body. Naraku laughed against her skin and lethal claws weaved into chaotic raven locks, pulling viciously. _

_As her hands fervently slid through his midnight hair, soft and silky like the web of a spider, a secure cocoon of blackness that enclosed her, tickling her flushed skin like smooth feathers, Kagome replied in a breathless tone, "Yes."_

_As the panted words left her puffy lips, Naraku viciously bit into the tender junction between her neck and collarbone, and Kagome cried out, a pleading sound that seemed all too much like a moan. Kagome knew there was a gleeful smirk gracing Naraku's darkly alluring features, and she also had the faint inkling that this was somehow familiar, though she didn't bother to dwell on the vague thought, too enraptured by the agile hand that presently slid down her chest across all too receptive skin and teased perk nipples._

_"And then you will kill me?"_

_The question was uttered almost innocently, if it weren't for the sultry undercurrent under which Kagome seemed to melt inescapably. Fanatically, her hands traveled across hot skin, as if in a hopeless attempt to absorb some of that warmth into her icy cold body as she too loosened and untied clothing._

_Naraku grinded against her, teeth scrapping violently against delicate flesh, vibrant red marks and bloody gashes left in their wake, and Kagome whimpered, bucking again, needy._

_Then with a feral growl and splash of scarlet on the tatami in a sickly splat, Naraku forcibly pinned her wrists (all jutting bones and taut ashen white skin) above her head and kissed her, licking the blood from her lips. If sin and immorality had taste (and maybe it did, Kagome thought numbly), Naraku was it, coppery and salty like blood, bitter but so tantalizingly luscious—a kiss of death, if she hadn't felt so lifeless already. _

_As abrupt and as brutal as it began, the kiss ended and with another far from gentle jerk, Naraku positioned himself, wet heat pressing into wet heat but still not quite there. _

_A shiny string of saliva linked their lips, and all at once Kagome seemed to be aware of the numerous dribbles of slick blood that oozed down her humming body. She shuddered in (desperate) anticipation and stared—lustfully, she wondered, or simply trying to fill that hollow place in her heart?—into blazing whirlpools of scarlet._

_"So, Kagome?" he murmured inquiringly, rolling her name between his fanged teeth (blinding white stained with scarlet) and talented tongue (she had thought it forked, but that had been her imagination)._

_And as she answered with a firm, unwavering "Yes" Naraku hungrily entered her._

_Whispered. "We shall see if you are a liar, Kagome."_

_Any semblance of coherency or rationality Kagome might have retained was lost into the delicious red haze of pain and ecstasy that instantly overwhelmed her. _

**.  
. ... .  
.**

One moment, she knew nothing, her life precariously pieced together by fragile jagged fragments and veiled uncertainties, and in the next she remembered everything and realized she was a fool.

Yet it didn't matter, because those precious memories—priceless pearls in a fathomless black sea—for which she had ardently _(bloodily, painstakingly) _searched washed over her like a burst of the cool, mountain breeze, leaving her pleasantly refreshed and calm but otherwise unchanged.

In fact, it was a divine relief to have that burden _(like listlessly sinking into a sand pit, no idea when you will drown) _off her road-weary shoulders once and for all.

For she knew all—_her past, her identity, everything, everything_—and it did not matter in the slightest.

_"Don't tell me you still love him, my lovely china doll."_

"No, I don't," Kagome answered softly, as to not choke on the thick blood that gurgled in her throat and steadily trickled down her chin, garish scarlet beads of life spilling from her in a mocking rhythm.

Hand still thrust into her chest, claws flexing and ripping at the tender meat of her insides, Naraku callously lifted her body like some kind of meaningless doll to be controlled then thrown aside when one became bored and pressed her against his unnaturally warm body.

Lips ghosting across the sensitive shell of her ear _(in a motion so familiar, Kagome knew there was a conniving smirk twisting that acerbic mouth) _Naraku acidly whispered, "So why can't you kill him, Kagome? I thought you hated him?"

"I do," she replied and afterward coughed hoarsely, blood spewing from her abnormally colorless lips in a shimmering spray of scarlet _(like the fireworks in the future, she dazedly mused, but they were meaningless to her now)._

Indeed, she despised Inuyasha with all of the black, black scraps of her heart that still feebly thrived, but that did not mean she could kill him.

In her foolishness, her twisted, vengeful idealism _(it still fluttered in her hollow heart like a lost butterfly, Kagome realized, and it would never die), _she had thought she could kill him.

Kagome couldn't, however.

She had the ability, certainly. She was dangerously powerful and hauntingly icy and so close to heartless that it scared all others, especially the houshi and the taijya, people whom she had once called friends but whom currently were utterly insignificant.

Yet she wouldn't, couldn't kill this hanyou, her once beloved Inuyasha, who had ripped out her heart, leaving a gaping black wound that would neither heal nor scar, simply bleeding and bleeding for eternity or at least until she gave up on life completely—and he hadn't even deigned it important enough to return it in fleshy, ruined shreds.

_"So why can't you kill him, Kagome?" _

Just because she was no longer sentimental didn't mean she still wasn't human.

"Because I'm human, Naraku, I'm _human_," Kagome muttered, a bizarre, sardonic smile twisting colorless lips _(their ghostly pallor accentuated more by the luminous scarlet blood), "_and that is something you will never understand."

Although he had heard these self-righteous words previously, Naraku paused, scarlet eyes darkening, flickering, as if disturbed by their own impious demons, a hauntingly ethereal ghost that bared a forbidding resemblance to a sapphire-eyed, raven-haired miko that had distorted his own devious game and ruthlessly turned it back on him.

"Will you kill me?" Naraku queried, his velvet voice once again treacherous, scorn filling its intoxicating tenor, like a silk ribbon that wrapped around Kagome's fragile neck in a suffocating spider web.

As if to reaffirm the scathing question, he again flexed his claws buried deeply in Kagome's ribcage, slicing through vital organs like mere rice paper, and Kagome wasn't able to suppress the shrill, tormented cry that escaped her bloodless but blood-smeared lips.

_"We shall see if you are a liar, Kagome."_

"No."

"Why not?" Another vicious clench of razor claws and a sickly, blood-choked whimper because Kagome had become immune to pain emotionally, not physically.

"Because I expected it of you."

"And that excuses me, my all-knowing miko?" A velvet, mirthless laugh.

"No. I think I could"—a strangled gasp, blood a wet, sickening squelch—"learn to love again through you."

"You're a foolish, albeit lovely hypocrite."

A smile stretched over perfectly aligned, bloodstained teeth.

"So are you, Naraku-sama. But you need me, don't you? And I… I think I need you too."

At this, Naraku paused again, realizations of a fearful, entirely foreign kind gleaming behind poisoned scarlet, and suddenly he withdrew his claws from Kagome, a sneer twisting his lips, an all too apparent mask of malice to obscure the confusion behind it as he assessed the situation.

With a sibilant hiss of wheezy breath between clenched teeth, Kagome swayed dizzily on the blood-encrusted roots of the Goshinboku.

Then, the illusion dissipated.

Finding her balance, Kagome was able to clearly distinguish the rolling clouds of purple miasma that lazily encircled Naraku and her, obscuring them from the houshi and taijiya's view.

Even though there was no sign of the blood that had poured down her slender frame in sinuous waves of glimmering scarlet only moments ago, Kagome did not turn around and instead trained her mutely glowing sapphire eyes _(speckled with a growing, startling scarlet but somehow less menacing than before)_ on the traitorous Inuyasha, who was still immobile and oblivious as ever.

As she almost nonchalantly surveyed him, her countenance remained strangely indifferent, almost serene. No hint of that prior vengeance wrathfully shimmered in those exotic, bi-colored eyes, only a cool acceptance, the pristine expression of the miko she should be.

Even is she wasn't sentimental, she was a miko. She was human, a living, breathing soul, no matter how much of her once ripe, perpetually optimistic heart had wilted into this blackened, gaping void of sin or how much Naraku proclaimed her to be a—his—beautiful, soulless doll.

_This is where I say goodbye, Inuyasha_, Kagome dispassionately thought as if it was a dream from which she was finally awaking. _This is where I say goodbye to you forever._

"Perhaps, I need you," Naraku evenly assented behind her, his manner placid and false.

_You are my past, Inuyasha, and I live in my own future, where you are nothing_, Kagome continued soundlessly, mindlessly. _This was your choice and this is the end. _

"However, I merely need you as one needs a doll, a lovely plaything to pass the time," Naraku declared smoothly, and Kagome's smile widened, a longer stretch of bloodless, blood-smeared lips that gave her wintry features more sparkling vivacity than they had possessed in far too long.

_"We shall see if you are a liar, Kagome."_

But Kagome had realized that they were far similar than they liked to acknowledge, and Kagome took an odd comfort in that. Naraku was as much as a liar as she.

He didn't understand her and thus feared her like he had once proclaimed she feared the unknown.

"You're a liar, Naraku, and have become so lost in these games that you have spun with you spider fingers that you are blind," Kagome retorted, at last turning to face Naraku, that dazzling smile now full bloom across her exquisite, porcelain features _(and she does look so enticing to Naraku, beautiful and awash in an aura of bloody scarlet)._

"Dolls don't love," Naraku reminded her, in a jeering, wary voice.

"I don't deny that you helped create that person who I am now," Kagome acquiesced calmly, fluidly moving forward, still with the ghostly grace of translucent butterfly fluttering in a surreal reality of her own. "But despite what you think I don't believe you ever truly wanted a doll, because that wouldn't be any fun, ne, Naraku-sama?"

While Naraku observed her with suspicious, narrowed scarlet eyes which Kagome knew as well as she knew her own, she heedlessly lifted her right hand—the one with his mark, burning as strong and red as ever—and, easily ignoring the blood slickly sliding down her tarnished silvery white sleeve like a supple waterfall of clashing red and white, she placed her palm against Naraku's solid chest.

As she expected, there was no heart beat.

Her flawless smile didn't falter for a moment, still as brilliant and tenacious as ever _(it was similar to the one she had when she first awoke, and Naraku was undeniably intrigued, fascinated)._

Naraku had a demonic heart that didn't beat with life, and she had a hollow bruised wound that leisurely bled her life away.

They were a perfect match.

Idly, she slid her hand over the fine, elegant material of his clothes, across silky skin, languidly following the curve of his neck and jaw, coming to rest on his oddly warm cheek.

He was so warm, wrapped in his bloody scarlet sin and wicked mendacity, while she was cold, adrift in her gentle, delicate human ways and icy, unsentimental beliefs.

They were perfect for each other in this deceptive, juxtaposed game of theirs that no one else could understand, and they savored each beguiling moment.

"Don't you have anything more to say?" Naraku questioned curiously, referring to Inuyasha.

"No," Kagome answered simply, not even bothering to look back.

"And the houshi and the taijiya?"

Casually Kagome's sapphire eyes flickered over to where the houshi and the taijiya had remained, _(for what seemed like an eternity but truly no more than a few, timeless minutes)_,Miroku restraining Sango as they both gazed distressingly at the curling miasma which hid Kagome and Naraku. Kagome lightly shook her head _(after taking amused, detached note that Naraku had not returned the Kazaana to the houshi's hand)._

In time, perhaps, they would be alright.

Once upon a time, she might have loved them, cared for them, but in that selfless affection she had died for them, and now she was not the Kagome they had known, loved, cherished.

"They are the past and—"

"—They are meaningless," Naraku finished for her, that devious smirk _(for which she had unknowingly acquired a fondness, perhaps even love, swept and carefully spun in his sinful silk web)_ reappearing on those velvet lips, devilishly scarlet eyes as addictive and malicious as ever.

Kagome felt the sudden, insatiable urge to kiss him, so she did, and Naraku responded viciously, tongues warring, teeth biting, nipping, saliva and blood mingling. Bloodstained nails dug into her wild raven hair savagely; razor nails dragged across her skin, carelessly tearing fine cloth and leaving raw, possessive streaks of blistering red in their wake.

Such a treacherous game of illusions and dreams, lies and fantasy in which they had been caught with no chance of escape, an enthralling tortuous game in which they would live together, ruling over all those inferior, and then die together, leaving behind a darkly tempting legacy of sin and power.

And she wouldn't have it any other way.

"So my beautiful doll," murmured Naraku tauntingly, pointed fang trailing casually over her swollen bottom lip, "what shall we do next?"

Kagome knew the word was more tease than malice and she delightedly accepted the challenge with effortless poise, falling into her role gracefully.

"Do you know the bone-eater's well, Naraku-sama?" Kagome dreamily breathed against his skin, the air between them moist and almost tangible like sticky strings of a sweetly poisoned gossamer web that infinitely connected them together. "My mother lives on the other side of the well, and I think we should pay her a visit. For one last goodbye."

With a sinister gleam in his beautiful scarlet eyes, Naraku laughed darkly, kissed her again, and Kagome smiled contentedly into that kiss.

In the next moment, both figures, a striking mural of contrasting realities—light, dark; truth, lie—warped sinfully into one, suddenly vanished in a tumultuous haze of purple miasma.

Contentment was blissful in an all too sinful way.

– _Owari _–

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End Notes: So... review?

Once again thanks so much to everyone who read and reviewed! Hope you enjoyed!

Ja ne!

– scelerus animus o.O


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